


Exclusive

by copperbadge



Series: Magazineverse [1]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Interviews, News Media, POV Outsider, Slice of Life, Snipers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 08:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heroes In Manhattan: From Captain America's Hidden Talents To The Truth About The Hulk, We Debunk The Myths And Expose The Daily Lives Of The Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Knotta and Gypsy for betas! 
> 
> Also many thanks to Knotta for standing in as Steve Rogers and doing the awesome illustration towards the end of Chapter 1, to Sanura, who wrote Thor's awesome epics, and to Nakki, who did the Nature cover design. 
> 
> Theawkwardterrier on Tumblr has done [an awesome aesthetic imageset for the story here!](http://theawkwardterrier.tumblr.com/post/158325022694/favorite-fic-aesthetics-16-exclusive-by)
> 
> Warnings: Some discussion of childhood trauma and depression; by request I have added a warning for a sniper event. 
> 
> I ignored the last ten or fifteen minutes of Iron Man III. You're welcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note for new readers -- there are comments on this chapter which mention a fairly big spoiler for later in the fic. You may want to avoid reading the comments on chapter one if you want it to stay a surprise :)

IT'S THREE in the morning, and the Avengers are playing baseball.

Captain America and Black Widow are on one side, Thor and Hawkeye on the other, with Iron Man playing perpetual defense. The Hulk -- in some form -- is umpire.

The baseball game is virtual; there's a real bat, but the gloves and ball are blue-light holograms. Several floors of Stark Tower, New York's newest and most architecturally dubious ornament, have been set aside for Avenger use, but even Stark Tower can't host an Avenger playing real baseball indoors.

This night game comes shortly before I am scheduled to finish my two-week stay with the Avengers. Starting at the end seems counter-intuitive, but it's better this way: a real slice of Avengers life, without any of the awkwardness of the first few days I spent trying to understand them.

Without the uniform and cowl, Captain America is a boyish blond man with a smile a mile wide, but there's an unmistakable air of command as he murmurs with Black Widow about strategy. Not far off, Tony Stark is reiterating the rules and regulations of fouls, balls, and outs to Thor, a giant man in, at the moment, Mickey Mouse pajamas. Hawkeye stands nearby, watching the others.

The gymnasium has low lights and one long glass wall looking out on Manhattan, which glows dimly before sunrise.

Iron Man pitches and Captain America swings, hitting a high pop-fly. Hawkeye goes deep, leaping like a cat, and the holographic ball just barely ricochets off his glove. He runs for it, scoops it up, and shoots it towards second, where Thor is waiting. Captain America heads back for first base, but Thor lifts off and _flies_ past him, tagging him out on the way.

Hulk calls it an out. Stark calls Hulk a traitor.

Captain America, apparently bored, does a handstand while waiting for the bickering to end. Hawkeye and Black Widow wrestle amiably. Thor practices his swing, but he's using a large, square hammer with a leather grip to practice. Every ball he hits with the hammer leaves the "park".

"Sometimes people can't sleep," Hawkeye informed me, when I witnessed the first of these predawn games. Tonight is the third since I arrived.

This is the life of the Avengers.

 

NO AMOUNT of begging, bribery, or subterfuge managed to penetrate the steel wall of secrecy surrounding the Avengers in the wake of the Chitauri attack on New York. Tony Stark, the only public face of the team, deflected all questions and maintained a sort of hero's code. He wouldn't name the man under the Captain America cowl, he wouldn't confirm the identities of Black Widow or Hawkeye, and he didn't know where Thor was. He refused to give any details about where the Hulk was or how he was contained. He did it all with a screw-you grin that told the world he knew the answers and didn't think they'd earned the right to have them. It was Tony Stark Theatrical at its finest.

Six months after the Battle of Manhattan, the Avengers were again let off the leash. They were sent to defend a small midwestern town against an attack by the terrorist group AIM, an enemy Stark had dealt with once before. AIM was prevented from further terrorist acts, and the Avengers were lauded by the heartland as heroes, without any of the cynicism of New York in the wake of their first battle. Still, the public wouldn't be content with half-answers any more, and Stark clearly struggled under the constant public scrutiny.

After the second Avengers mission, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, which oversees their activities, decided that "no publicity" was no longer "good publicity". S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted public exposure: a long, in-depth human interest piece that would answer the public's questions about who our newest heroes are.

Why I was chosen was a mystery at first. When a massive, secretive intelligence agency asks for you by name, you don't ask too many questions in return. I was simply told by S.H.I.E.L.D. to present myself at Stark Tower at five pm on Wednesday, and to stay -- living with, eating with, and sharing the lives of the Avengers -- for two weeks.

I was met at Stark Tower by Maria Hill, a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and the handler for the Avengers. I expected dossiers, or at least a briefing. I got neither.

"They're temperamental," she told me, as we walked through the intimidatingly large lobby of the Tower. "They're very private people, and some of them aren't strangers to publicity. They decided -- " _on Stark's advice_ left unsaid, " -- that they wanted you to meet them in person, not on paper."

"And you agree?" I asked.

"I'm their handler, not their mother," she said. "Something I frequently tell them, as well. You'll like them," she added. "Just don't bring up politics in front of Bruce."

"Who's Bruce?" I asked, but she just smiled as she ushered me into a private elevator, which required a retinal scan for her and a thumbprint scan for me.

 

THE AVENGERS are arranged in a sort of living-room area that the elevator opens onto. Agent Hill shoves me out into the living room, and when I turn the door is already closing behind her. She gives me a smile and a wave.

When I turn back, there they are, looking at me expectantly.

Tony Stark is sitting on a loveseat with the CEO of Stark Industries (and incidentally his fiance), Virginia "Pepper" Potts; in a suit worth more than some cars, he looks too relaxed to be relaxed, and Potts has a charming meeting-the-press smile on. Next to them, sitting painfully upright in a wing-chair, is a man who can only be Captain America, especially since he's wearing an Army uniform.

Thor, who never does give any other name, is in full battle armor on a sofa nearby, with Black Widow and Hawkeye next to him. Outside of Stark, only Hawkeye has been tentatively identified by the public: Clinton Barton, who doesn't exist in any record anyone can find but who has stirred the memories of several people who claim he was a trick-shot performer in a circus twenty years ago. He doesn't look old enough. Thor is looming menacingly and Black Widow is sitting forward, looking defensive of Hawkeye, who is curled up in the corner of the sofa against the arm.

Lurking behind the wing-chair, the only one standing and the one who looks like he least wants to be here, is a middle-aged man in casual dress, fingers fidgeting along the top of the chair. They're clearly all on best-behavior for this first meeting.

There's barely a beat in which to feel awkward before Stark is throwing himself out of the loveseat and forward, welcoming me to the Tower. There are many things that Tony Stark excels at, but talking is a skill he's honed -- in part to keep journalists like me from asking too many questions, I suspect.

"Come meet the team," he says, though he hauls Potts with him to introduce first. "The delightful Pepper Potts. Not an Avenger, but none of us are perfect."

" _Is_ perfect," she murmurs, before taking my hand with a long-suffering smile for Stark. "Pleasure to meet you."

"The giant on the sofa is Thor," Stark continues, and Thor lifts a large, mallet-shaped metal hammer in salute. "Natasha, Clint..."

I say it's my pleasure, that it's nice to meet them, but I'm not allowed time to ask if Clint is Clinton Barton or what Natasha's full name is before Stark is dragging the one unidentifiable man forward by the sleeve.

"Dr. Bruce Banner," he announces.

Dr. Banner looks intensely uncomfortable.

It's not hard to understand why. Several years ago, Bruce Banner was a brilliant biochemist who one day simply fell off the map. His disappearance caused only minor waves in the news media, but it shocked the scientific community. Conspiracy theorists pointed to his work for the Department of Defense and his entanglement with the daughter of a four-star Army general. Others thought he had committed suicide. Finding him here, in Stark Tower, is surprising at best.

"It's a long story," he says, when he catches the expression on my face. "For now, let's just say I speak for the Hulk."

I barely have time to wonder if he's been brought in by S.H.I.E.L.D. as the Hulk's keeper before I'm pulled to the wing-chair and presented with ceremony.

"Captain America," Stark says grandly.

"Steve Rogers," the soldier in the chair corrects, standing to shake my hand. Most of the ribbons on his chest aren't familiar to me, but I can pick out the Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor. I think that whoever has filled the shoes of the first Captain America must be a high achiever. "Pleasure to meet you."

"You took the name," I say, surprised, before Stark can interrupt us. The identity of the historical Captain America was never officially declassified by the government, but the Howling Commandos that he led were never shy about making sure his name was remembered.

"Something like that," he answers, with a small smile and a wary look in his eye.

 

DINNER IS served in a corner room with a nearly 180 degree view of south Manhattan, which took far less damage than the city to the north of Stark Tower and thus has far fewer cranes and scaffolds.

One would expect, of a meal presided over by Tony Stark, that the food would be delicate, catered morsels, but the Avengers stop eating for no man. They are athletes, and the meal is a massive, high-carb, high-protein delight: spaghetti bolognese, chicken alfredo, green salad, roasted eggplant. When I compliment the food, Black Widow nudges Hawkeye, who smiles for the first time.

"We tend to cook a lot of food you can make in large portions," Dr. Banner says, as Thor helps himself to a massive bowl of spaghetti.

"No chef?" I ask, surprised.

"We rotate," Dr. Banner replies.

"Tomorrow Bruce is on, so prepare for the heat," Stark adds. Dr. Banner ducks his head. "When I cook, we eat pizza. It's safer for everyone that way."

"Who made this?" I ask. Stark points his fork at Hawkeye, who acknowledges it with a nod.

I am seated between Stark on one side and "Natasha", the Black Widow, on the other, clearly the two most capable of deflecting uncomfortable questions. I'm not planning on asking any this early, but even if I were, the decision is taken out of my hands by what happens next.

"So," Thor says, as silence looms. "You wish to hear tales of our heroic exploits."

"Well, it's as good a place as any to start," I say, even as Stark groans and the man calling himself Steve Rogers tries to interrupt.

"Don't encourage -- " he begins, but Thor is already opening his mouth to declaim.

_Lo, these many months past, when I first came_  
_In search of my long-wayward missing kin_

The rest of the meal is spent listening to Thor retell the story of the Battle of Manhattan between bites of food. He recites in what seems to be flawless iambic pentameter, but for a man whose chosen weapon is a hammer, there is a certain subtlety to his language. The story makes for good material, even for those who were there on the front lines. Hawkeye and Rogers listen raptly; Stark and Black Widow seem mostly amused. Potts murmurs with Banner from time to time. I wonder how often they're treated to Thor's epics.

"One time, he spent an hour recounting the saga of his first visit to a grocery store," Black Widow tells me in an undertone, once we've applauded the performance. "It's strangely compelling."

"You could take that show on the road," I tell Thor, and he looks puzzled.

"Which road?" he asks. Thor's not from around here.

I feel a little like a traitor as dessert is served. This meal has been educational, to say the least. Like any situation where the journalist is perhaps not the most popular person in the room, I have to plan out how and when to approach each of them, and how long to wait before they trust me enough to answer honestly. I've already seized on the most likely to talk: Thor and Steve Rogers. Stark probably hasn't given a truly honest interview since he was seven. Black Widow and Hawkeye are clearly suspicious, and Dr. Banner just seems so nervous.

Thor it is, then, I think, as Stark carefully guides me away from the table, away from most of the guests, and up to the room I'll be sleeping in. It's clear my allotted time with the Avengers is over for the day.

 

THERE IS one more member of the Avengers I have yet to meet, one who wasn't introduced to me by Stark. J.A.R.V.I.S., or simply Jarvis, as he prefers to be known, is the intelligent computer program who sits at the heart of Stark Tower and, so the rumors have it, aids Stark in piloting the Iron Man armor.

When I'm left to my own devices in my room, this first evening, I want to take notes and record what I've encountered, but first I have to introduce myself.

"Jarvis?" I ask, and there is an immediate response.

"How may I be of assistance?" a voice says, from everywhere at once. It's muted, melodious even, a male tenor with a gentle transatlantic accent.

"We didn't get to talk, earlier," I say. "I wanted to say hello."

"At my request, Sir did not introduce me," he responds. I'm looking at the ceiling, involuntarily. "I was uncertain you would wish to speak with me."

"Why?"

"Disembodied voices tend to unsettle the unprepared." It sounds like he speaks from experience.

"You're capable of making requests?" I ask.

"Indeed. I am an intelligent program, capable of developing preferences and emulating, if not directly experiencing, emotion."

"How's Stark take that?"

"With distinct ill-humor," he replies, though there's amusement in his tone.

"I don't suppose you can give me any dirt on the Avengers?"

"I have been authorized to provide any information you require which does not threaten national security or the personal safety of the occupants of the Tower," he says, which is surprising. "I am also not authorized to disclose any personal information which may be compromising or embarrassing."

"How do you know what that entails?"

"I use my judgement."

"How's your judgement?"

"Impeccable," he replies frostily.

"Can you tell me where the Hulk is?" I ask, testing him. I think of my childhood, asking ridiculous questions of the narrators of old text-based adventure games on the computer.

"I believe you should speak to Dr. Banner about that," Jarvis says.

He's good.

 

JARVIS BEGAN life as a missile-guidance system. Unlike most advanced programs, which are created by a team, Jarvis was coded exclusively by Tony Stark. The goal, at the time, was to design a weapon capable of facial recognition and, if necessary, of following voice commands issued by its controllers. It was developed on spec, outside of contract, or else the US government would have had that program long before now. It was just a side-project Stark was working on in his spare time. To his surprise, the facial-recognition software interfaced with the voice-command software and created a learning program. Within weeks it could respond to Stark in complete sentences, but would _only_ respond to Stark.

He scrapped the dream of hyperintelligent missiles in favor of creating the world's first autonomous Artificial Intelligence, who not only has beliefs and opinions of his own but is not shy in voicing them. In the years since Jarvis first came on-line, Stark has been violently protective of his program, refusing all attempts to access the base code or the servers on which it is stored.

Jarvis, likewise, is extremely defensive of his creator, coupling an almost childlike adulation of him with the intellectual rigor of a grown adult and a sort of frustrated, fond tenacity found in most of Stark's closest companions. Like Virginia Potts, Jarvis obviously loves Tony Stark and just as obviously is having none of Stark's infamous bull.

Outside of this one touchy subject, however, Jarvis is friendly, helpful, and soothing to speak with. He is willing to provide me with any accessible information I desire, filtering search results for me and providing video footage from dinner so that I can transcribe Thor's saga. (For a full transcript of Thor's account of the Battle of Manhattan, **[click here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/852316)**.)

He has access to an impressive database of music and film, as well as a full library of ebooks ranging from esoteric philosophy to murder mysteries. Like his creator, he is an atheist, but it's clear that he was either programmed with or developed a deep sense of compassion and care for the people whose well-being is more or less in his control.

"What do you think of the Avengers?" I ask, after a few hours of conversation and collaboration.

"You may need to restate your parameters," he replies.

"Do you like them? It was just you and Mr. Stark for a long time," I clarify. "Are you capable of feeling jealous? Or of feeling relief that there are other people willing to fill the gaps when Iron Man can't be everywhere at once?"

Even a second's pause is a long time, for a program which can perform millions of calculations per second.

"The Avengers fill an important need," he says finally.

"For the public good, or for Mr. Stark?"

"I'm afraid that may be an answer you should seek from him. As individuals, yes, one could say I like them. I like their presence in my Tower."

Stark thinks Stark Tower is his. I'm not so sure.

"Do you interact directly with them?"

"Dr. Banner and Captain Rogers more than the others," he replies. "Dr. Banner often requires my assistance in his laboratory work."

"And Captain Rogers?"

"Captain Rogers has a lot of questions," Jarvis says. He sounds fond, like an indulgent parent. "But all of them make use of my resources at one time or another. I favor them. I have not always been accustomed to respect from strangers."

"What do you make of me?" I ask.

"That remains to be seen," he replies.

 

WHEN I wake, the next morning, Jarvis informs me of the time, the weather, and that Stark is in his workshop, where I am not allowed. It's nothing personal; the workshop contains sensitive data that can't easily be redacted around strangers, and Stark's work has frequently been the target of industrial espionage.

The rest of the Avengers are either asleep or out of the building, with the exception of Captain America. Captain America is in the communal Avengers kitchen, and Jarvis informs me that he wishes to speak with me at my convenience. I suspect Captain America is not a man one wants to keep waiting, and that my convenience should be soon.

The communal Avengers kitchen is almost blinding in the early morning, all white countertops and chrome appliances. No less startling is Captain America in a t-shirt barely big enough for his broad frame and a pair of what appear to be yoga pants. He's reading a newspaper, which he lays on the breakfast table when I enter.

"Good morning," he says, pleasant but formal. "Can I get you a coffee?"

"Please. Cream, no sugar."

"Easily done. Breakfast?"

"If there's some available."

He sets a mug of coffee in front of me, then retrieves a plate from the oven: pancakes and sausage. "I've already eaten," he says, sitting down again and shifting his newspaper aside.

"I wanted to speak to you without the others present," he announces, and proceeds to give me a highly intimidating lecture. He doesn't seem to intend it, but the effect is of a high school principal informing me that he's going to have his eye on me.

What he says makes sense. He wants me to be aware that the people I'm meant to report on are human beings, with human failings, and he'd prefer if I didn't scandalmonger -- his word exactly -- in my reporting. His speech is easy, clipped just a little by a hint of a New York accent, and his vocabulary is distinctly old-fashioned. He seems reassured by my promise that I'm here to write about people, not gods, and relaxes when I suggest that I could ask him a few questions.

"Well then," he says, sitting back, apparently at ease with being interviewed. "Go ahead."

I want to know what it was like to be selected to be Captain America; whether he feels a sense of kinship for the war hero, and whether he thinks he's up to the responsibility of wearing the white star. He looks amused.

"You're not asking the right question, son," he says, but before I can ask him what he means, Stark enters the room.

"Don't let me interrupt," he announces, and then without pause for breath, "Cap, I need that chip from your uniform. Running stress numbers, see if I can't get tensile up."

"Little busy right now, Tony."

"Christ, journalists," Stark says, without even looking my way. "Smile pretty, pretty boy, and go fetch, or I'm breaking into your bedroom and looting your laundry."

"I gave the chip to Bruce, he wanted to check my biometrics."

"That foul conniver," Stark replies, helping himself to a package of granola bars from the well-stocked pantry. "He knows uniform comes first."

"Do not wake him up," Captain America orders, his voice full of command.

"Sure, take his side. Look, do you need me here?" he asks me.

I'm torn; Stark is a notoriously difficult man to pin down, but then again, Captain America is even lower-exposure. And while I may want to ask more about Dr. Banner, I want to know what questions I should be asking the Captain.

The decision is made for me when Stark is dismissed with a shoo-ing motion from the Captain, who turns an apologetic look on me as soon as he's gone from the room.

"Tony is very goal-oriented," he says, and then adds, as if being conscientious, "depending on the goal."

"Understandable," I reply, focused for a moment on the mug of coffee I've just drunk from. Stark might be difficult, but his coffee is stupendous. "You said just now I was asking the wrong question. What should I be asking?"

"How about you ask me what happened to the original Captain America?" he says. He looks like he's about to let me in on a really good joke.

 

STEVE ROGERS was a small, frail man of nineteen when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States officially entered World War II.

Almost everyone in the US knows the story of Captain America, but to poor or wimpy kids in New York, he wasn't just history. We grew up with Captain America as our anthem, our hero: one of us who made good and died gloriously. Most kids I knew playacted Captain America games for at least a portion of their childhood. I wasn't the only one who dreamed of a secret serum that would catapult me to superherodom.

The real Steve Rogers didn't have it easy even before the war, and he struggled with the war when it came. He spent nearly a year trying to join up, disqualified due to everything from flat feet to a heart murmur. He was colorblind and asthmatic, prone to illness, with severe allergies. After five tries at five different recruiting offices, he was accepted into the Strategic Scientific Reserve. The S.S.R., then in its infancy, would eventually split into two branches: one would merge with the O.S.S. to form the Central Intelligence Agency, and the other would form S.H.I.E.L.D. under the guidance of its first director, Timothy Dugan. Dugan himself served as a sergeant under Captain America during the war.

The S.S.R. subjected Private Steven Rogers to a process that not only fixed his genetic frailties but endowed him with endurance and strength unmatched in human history. And it put a good ten inches at least on his height.

The co-creator of the process, Abraham Erskine, was murdered shortly after its first success, and the formula for the serum injected into Rogers died with him. Rogers became the world's first and last super-soldier. Many have attempted to recreate the serum that caused the change, all without significant success. Captain Steve Rogers eventually went overseas to fight, and was declared Missing In Action during a mission so classified even his combat troop, the Howling Commandos, wouldn't discuss it. It's possible they didn't know what happened either.

Seven years after his disappearance, per regulation, he was declared dead.

That much information is available to anyone with access to comic books or Wikipedia. The legend of Steve Rogers was hotly debated almost since the day he went missing. Occasionally reports crop up of him in South America, still hunting Nazis; in Cuba, as a defector and a staunch Communist; even living out a quiet life in the US as a private citizen. Once in a while someone claims to have a skin or hair sample available for sale to the highest bidder. All of them have been hoaxes.

What really happened to Captain Steve Rogers strains credulity almost to the breaking point.

Captain America, so I was told that morning over coffee in the sunny kitchen of Stark Tower, led an assault on the headquarters of Hydra, an isolated but powerful splinter faction of the Nazi party. The leader of Hydra, Johann Schmidt, attempted to escape in a bomber heading for the United States, carrying advanced weaponry capable of destroying entire cities -- each as powerful as an atomic bomb, without the dirty radioactive fallout.

Captain America killed Schmidt, took control of the damaged bomber, and brought it down over Greenland, preventing the bombs from being deployed. He was knocked unconscious by the crash, but survived. The leaking fuselage let in water, locking him in ice and sinking below the surface of an arctic shelf as it filled.

The last two paragraphs are the final piece of a puzzle which until now has remained classified. I later discovered that Captain Rogers himself negotiated for its declassification and insisted the information be made public here for the first time.

The body of Captain America remained in that arctic shelf, frozen and submerged in the crashed Hydra bomber, for seventy years. The serum that had brought him to the pinnacle of human perfection preserved his cellular integrity, and so he lay waiting, like King Arthur, to be discovered and brought home.

The details of his discovery are so top-secret that not even Captain America is fully aware of them, having been unconscious at the time. It became clear during this story, however, that I was not speaking with a soldier tapped to become a new Captain America for the modern age. I was speaking with the original Captain America, a man born in the Roaring Twenties and raised in the Depression. He woke from the crash to find the world had moved on, and seventy years had passed in the blink of an eye.

He looks sad as he explains the last of it: waking to find his culture changed, most of his friends dead, and the children of men he knew in the war -- including Tony Stark, son of Howard Stark, who created the iconic white-star shield -- already older than himself. Captain America is ninety years old, but he looks all of twenty-three, the age he was when he went missing in the ice.

When I ask if he's contacted any of his comrades in arms, he shakes his head.

"A clean break hurts more, but it heals faster," he says, and sips the last of his coffee. I notice nobody else has interrupted us, and wonder if this was intentional. If this tragedy was something that had to be told before any of the other stories I need to hear can be.

There are a thousand questions I want to ask. How he's dealing with losing a world, and for that matter with finding a new one. How he's learned about modern technology, what he thinks of history, what he hoped for when he put the uniform on again. It's hard to speak, however, over his grief. And I reason, perhaps a little guiltily, I have two weeks here. I can ask later.

Still, I'm opening my mouth to speak when Jarvis does instead.

"Captain, our guest has an engagement."

"I do?" I ask, looking up.

"Right," Captain Rogers says, and looks determined. "I'm supposed to take you to see Clint and Natasha."

It appears my carefully thought-out plan for how to approach the Avengers is being preempted. By the Avengers.

 

CLINT AND Natasha -- often spoken as one word among the Avengers, "clintantasha" -- are waiting for me in a little lounge off the gymnasium designated for Avengers use. They're both freshly showered, still smelling of soap, wearing their official Avengers uniforms.

When I enter, Natasha is fussing with Clint's hair. The gun at her hip is very visible.

"Natasha Romanov," she says, as Captain Rogers delivers me to them. "We didn't get a full introduction last night."

"Clint Barton," Hawkeye adds, offering his hand. His grip is very firm. "And yeah. That Clint Barton."

"The circus performer?" I ask, because if he's not going to mince words, there's no reason I should.

"That's the one," he replies, blank-faced.

Clint Barton, as it turns out, is as all-American as Captain America himself, but from an opposite side of the national experience. A corn-fed son of Iowa, he paints a brief, idyllic-sounding, and admittedly sometimes slightly false-sounding picture of his origins in the Heartland. The Avengers' last battle, near Kansas City, was less than a hundred miles from his hometown. Orphaned at a young age, he spent some time in a group home before leaving town. He's never been back.

"You don't seem old enough to have been a circus performer twenty years ago," I point out. "Not the one people have spoken about in interviews."

"You can't trust them," Romanov intervenes, before Barton can speak. "They're out to make a quick buck and they don't care who they sell to do it."

"Tash," Barton chides, gentler than he's seemed up until now. It's evident that, regardless of Romanov's difficult, defensive stance around Barton, these two come as a pair. There will be no private interviews with them, at least not yet. I suspect this is going to be, as Captain Rogers might say, a hard row to hoe.

"I joined the circus young," he says. "It was under-the-table work."

"That's illegal, isn't it?" I ask.

"Yes," he says briefly. "It is."

That's all the information he's willing to give on the circus, though I make a note to look up those interviews people have done about him in more detail.

Barton is only slightly more forthcoming about his adult career. He joined the Army at eighteen, was a skilled sniper by the age of twenty, and by twenty-five had become a veteran of multiple conflicts. He was eventually recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D., where he trained as a pilot. Pilot, he makes clear, is a thin euphemism for his continuing career as a sniper.

Though he was filmed and photographed with a recurve bow during both Avengers conflicts, the only thing Barton speaks easily about is guns: his training in them, the makes and models he prefers, and the pleasure he takes in testing out new ballistic weaponry for Stark. Stark stopped making arms years ago, but he apparently makes exceptions for his teammates.

There is no discussion of Barton's participation in the Battle of Manhattan. There is no discussion past his enthusiasm for firearms. They avoid the topic with an exquisite deftness which I will only appreciate later, going through my notes. It will require Jarvis replaying the video of the interview to even see how it was done.

The Avengers have their own reasons for the way they reveal themselves. On the first full day with them, I haven't yet come to understand this.

What moves us away from Barton is Romanov, who is suddenly all too willing to discuss her own past if it gets us off his. To my surprise, she is very forthright about her history. Natasha Romanov speaks without a hint of accent, but her impeccable English is not her first language.

The Black Widow, the only woman on the Avengers -- one of only two Avengers who stayed on the street, in the heart of the scrum, during the Battle of Manhattan -- was born and raised in Volgograd, Russia. She trained and served as an intelligence officer for the KGB, but was eventually dismissed from her position due to what she politely terms "shifts in the political landscape".

If she were American, her career after the KGB would probably be termed "private security". As a Russian, most Americans would call her a mercenary. The truth likely lies somewhere between the two, but while Romanov freely admits to taking dangerous jobs for pay, she will not discuss what those jobs were.

Several years after leaving the KGB, she was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D., in the form of Clint Barton. Barton also trained her and partnered with her on missions. Barton, taking up the narrative smoothly, explains that they have rarely been separated for any length of time since Romanov defected to the US. They prefer to work together, and their quarters in Stark Tower adjoin one another. They were a team long before the Avengers, and have known each other much longer than any of the others.

They make an odd pair, these tightly-knit opposites, but they share common bonds: both rigidly trained, both adrift before finding a home at S.H.I.E.L.D., and both arguably the most vulnerable members of the team. Thor is clearly supernatural, Captain Rogers is chemically and genetically enhanced, Hulk is a giant wrecking machine, and Tony Stark has a flying suit of armor. Between the two of them, Hawkeye and Black Widow have a couple of guns, more than a couple of knives, a weapon that went out of style five hundred years ago, and the kind of guts you rarely see outside of action films.

"As close partners, have you found it difficult to integrate into the team?" I ask.

They share an amused look.

"None of us are what you might call natural team players," Barton says.

"I don't think it was more difficult for us than for anyone else," Romanov adds tactfully.

 

I HAVEN'T extracted much more useful information from Clint-and-Natasha by the time Thor comes to fetch me for lunch. Thor is a large man whose boisterous nature makes him seem bigger still, and you don't say no when he tells you it's time to be somewhere.

"Come, my friend!" he says, clapping me on the back as we enter the elevator. "We shall feast today. I have many more exploits to share with you."

"Got any place in mind?" I ask.

"Yes," he says, and lowers his voice conspiratorially. "We shall go to... _the buffet._ "

In many ways, Thor is the opposite of Barton and Romanov, and the shock is somewhat alarming. Over a heaping plate of chicken wings and salad from a nearby buffet restaurant, where the attendants look distinctly nervous, he gives me a story that beggars belief even more than Captain America's does. For what it's worth, the details of his past were confirmed by S.H.I.E.L.D. when I contacted them later that afternoon to do a reality check.

Thor, son of Odin, hails from a separate dimension from ours, not quite an alternate reality but not simply another planet. It's all very physics-based, with some astronomy and meteorology thrown in for good measure. Only about five people on Earth really understand it, so I'm told. Three of them -- Thor himself, Tony Stark, and Dr. Bruce Banner -- are members of the Avengers. The other two, Dr. Erik Selvig and Dr. Jane Foster, are both physicists with strong ties to the Avengers, and are actively studying the phenomenon. Dr. Foster is the only person to have written about it in a scholarly fashion. (For Dr. Foster's paper on the physical relationship between Asgard and Earth, **[click here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/856766)**.)

In past history, Thor's family occasionally visited Earth and were worshipped as gods by certain human cultures. Now they have drifted -- Thor, his father Odin, his mother Frigga, and the other Aesir people -- into myth and faith. Thor is, quite literally, a god walking the Earth, now formally charged with the protection of this realm by his father. His name for Earth is "Midgard."

How he fell in with the Avengers is a mystery he's not keen to share, but it has to do with the leader of the Chitauri attack: his brother Loki. Once a prince, then an outcast, and now a prisoner in Asgard, Loki was responsible for opening the portal in the sky over Manhattan, which allowed the Chitauri invaders to pass through to our world. The details are still classified -- so classified that almost an entire page of this article had to be redacted to prevent my arrest for treason -- but Loki's public identity has long been known, much longer than his link to one of the people responsible for his defeat.

When he does speak of Loki, which is not often, Thor's normally cheerful demeanor changes. There is a sense of grief, of loss, but also of failure -- as if by loving his brother more he could have prevented Loki's fall from grace, and thus indirectly prevented the deaths caused by the Chitauri attack.

His smile returns, however, when I ask him how he finds life with the Avengers, in the Tower.

"They are fine warriors," he declares. "Strong men and women. On Midgard it is only fair that a Midgardian should rule in these matters; I am proud to serve under Steven."

And how does he like Earth -- er, Midgard?

"It is not so advanced as Asgard in some ways, but it is a fine place to make a home," he replies. "And it is the realm of my beloved."

In the months since the Avengers became public figures, all of them have been linked romantically, but none of those links have ever been confirmed. Some -- like "Captain America fathered my baby!" -- are patently and provably false. Stark, as the face of the Avengers, is rumored to be cheating on Potts every few weeks, but Virginia Potts doesn't seem like she'd brook infidelity well, and most rumors remain that: just rumors. This is the first verifiable account, outside of the Stark Industries Power Couple, of any Avenger having a partner of any kind.

"Your beloved?" I ask.

Thor leans forward. "You must write nothing bad about her," he says, suddenly intent, and for the first time I see the warrior in him. Until now he's seemed like a particularly benevolent fraternity brother.

"I only write the facts," I reply.

"Then I need not worry," he answers. "My beloved is Jane Foster, a great and learned woman of Midgard."

Dr. Jane Foster, a dual Ph.D in astrophysics and theoretical physics, is not a woman to be spoken of lightly, on her own terms but especially if you want to avoid Thor's wrath. A respected scientist and teacher, Dr. Foster is frequently published in her field and has done research work for both NASA and CERN. And she was, so later research will confirm, present at Puente Antiguo in New Mexico when the rumors first began to surface about Thor's existence.

The Avengers and those who surround them should be romantic figures, but they appear to be more like super-scientists: Bruce Banner, a biochemist, Tony Stark, an engineer, Virginia Potts, head of a leading industry technological corporation, and now Jane Foster, an astrophysicist. Heroes for an era of exponential scientific growth.

Thor clearly adores Dr. Foster, who declined to be interviewed. He waxes rhapsodic (not in pentameter, this time) about her beauty, but it's clear he also respects her intellect and finds it a relief to be around someone who understands physics on his level. He often speaks of science in mystical metaphor, but it appears that is more for the benefit of people who wouldn't understand the technical jargon than because he can't grasp the physics himself. It's easy to see why less advanced civilizations would consider him a god.

"Now," he says, after two plates of chicken wings, one of ribs, and a giant bowl of salad, "We must return to the Tower. I have fight practice with the team, and you are to be prevented from attending."

"Oh?" I ask, as we stand and stroll out of the buffet, much to the relief of the staff.

"You are not to attend fight practice until all have agreed," he says. "Tony and Dr. Banner have yet to acquiesce. Do not worry!" he adds, clapping me on the shoulder. "Steven and myself will wear them down. He is very eager for you to see us fight. He is excessively proud of his shield-family."

"Is that so?"

"Indeed. But for now, some of us must know you better first. Ah!" he adds, clearly closing the subject, as an ice-cream truck comes into view. "Dessert!"

 

OUR COMMUNAL dinner that evening is something of a relief, after the quiet afternoon I spent confirming Thor's story and typing up my notes. I did try to get down to the gymnasium to see the fight practice, but Jarvis was firm, and his disapproval is nothing to sneer at.

It's evident that the Avengers are allowing me to see only what they want to be seen, but even a conspiracy of six slips up sooner or later. When I arrive in the kitchen a little early for dinner, I realize that their reserve the previous day was perhaps just shyness around a stranger. As a team, when they're not conscious of being observed, they are best described as boisterous.

Dr. Banner is at the stove, cooking something that smells like spices. Stark hovers around him, quasi-protectively, shelling him with questions about the food until he apparently has enough information to select an appropriate wine from the massive wine room off the kitchen. Barton is supervising an enormous rice cooker and joking with Romanov, who sits on the counter and serenely sharpens a knife while a large loin of steaming roast pork waits for her attention. Thor, brow furrowed in concentration, sets the table. Captain Rogers, leaning against the wall, watches over his team.

"Supervising?" I ask him.

"Staying out of the way," he replies. "I'm on dishes. So are you."

"Aglianico!" Stark announces, emerging with two bottles of wine. "Make yourself useful," he adds, and casually throws a bottle to me. Captain Rogers catches it when I don't react quickly enough.

"Not nice," he scolds Stark.

"Have you met me?" Stark calls, already walking into the dining room.

"What are we eating?" I ask Dr. Banner, who offers me a spoonful of sauce.

"Brazilian vegetable curry over rice, with optional pork loin roast for the carnivores," he says, as my eyes start to water. Captain Rogers puts a glass of water in my hand. I'm obviously not the first person Dr. Banner has absently dosed with a mouthful of fire.

There is so much I don't know about these people, but the choice to tell me the Captain's story first becomes obvious at dinner. Stark announces that they are playing Popular Culture, a game apparently invented to help Thor (not from around here) and the Captain (not from around now) get up to speed on modern culture. The game has few rules: they simply bounce popular culture references off each other, and take turns explaining them if Rogers and Thor haven't encountered them already.

"Tonight," Barton intones dramatically, "we've secretly replaced Steve's regular curry with instant curry. Let's see if he notices."

"Oh! I know that one! Bruce showed me," Captain Rogers says. "It's the coffee thing, with the flavor crystals."

Stark bursts into song. " _Like a virgin, touched for the very first time!_ "

Everyone looks at Captain Rogers, who flushes.

"Condom ad?" he tries. The table breaks up laughing.

"Madonna," Stark informs him. "The singer, not the religious figure."

"Oh! With the..." and Captain America makes a gesture reminiscent of the iconic Madonna cone brassiere. His blush deepens.

"Name one more Madonna song," Natasha commands.

Rogers thinks about this, chewing slowly to give himself more time. Dr. Banner hums the Jeopardy theme, which apparently Rogers already knows, because he scowls at him.

"True Colors," he says. Stark buzzes.

"That's Cyndi Lauper."

"Oh. Um. Wait, no, I can do this -- "

"Come on, every Madonna song sounds alike, that's not fair," Barton says.

"Vogue," Thor announces, and everyone looks at him. If you've never seen an ancient god vogue, you're missing out.

There are various undercurrents at the table which become evident over time. Stark seems to enjoy picking on Rogers, who loses his patience and gets snappish, much to Stark's evident delight. Clint-and-Natasha are on edge, and the others seem to sense it. Dr. Banner avoids my eyes. Only Thor seems completely at home, friendly with everyone, moving the conversation along whenever it lags.

The others drift away after dinner, but Rogers asks me to help him carry the plates to the kitchen, and then tells me he'll wash if I dry. I consider his origins and refrain from suggesting the large gleaming dishwasher next to the sink.

"So, have we worn you out yet?" he asks, handing me a dish towel.

"No more than usual. Less than the time I was on assignment with a pro football team," I answer. "Thor did devastate a lunch buffet, though. Just watching him eat is exhausting."

"Tony slips them extra under the table whenever he hears Thor's been by," Rogers says.

"What do you think of Mr. Stark?" I ask. "He seems to like needling you."

"You ask as if I'm unaware you'll publish this and he'll read it," he replies. There's a lot going on behind the youthful smile and innocent blue eyes, I think. And if what he's said is true, he _is_ used to the media -- just the media of seventy years ago.

"Is that a no-comment?"

"No. Just a reminder that what I say may be a softened truth," he replies. "Stark's a good man. Does a lot of good. Doesn't like it known. So, perhaps a softened truth and a little revenge," he adds, sounding amused. "Honestly, I don't mind. It keeps him entertained. Besides, as he keeps saying, I have to adjust to this modern sensibility."

Is that difficult?

"The learning, no. The knowing..." he says, and his eyes go distant. "Every step forward is a step away from what was. It's not comfortable. It's unpleasant. Still, necessary," he says, and hands me another plate to dry.

 

THE AVENGERS have a morning routine, more or less, which I grow to discover over the next few days. Rogers is invariably the first one up, but sometimes Banner or Romanov will be in the kitchen when he emerges. I've heard footsteps in the night, and sometimes low voices.

Rogers rises early and goes running on the sunrise streets of New York, often doing a half-marathon while most other people are still in bed. When he returns he fixes breakfast for himself -- for me as well, now that I'm here -- and then leaves a plate of food in the oven for Stark, a late-riser.

Barton usually eats the food left for Stark. He then makes a horrifying smoothie concoction that he leaves in the fridge for Stark, who seems to prefer liquid to actual food in the mornings. Thor has no fixed schedule, but if they weren't already up, Romanov and Banner usually drift in around the time Tony is "eating" and fend for themselves. Romanov eats a startling amount of cold cereal.

I hope to catch Dr. Banner on my second morning in the Tower, to learn why he lives with the Avengers and what his possible connection to the Hulk could be. It seems logical; a biophysicist with multiple honors in his field, Dr. Bruce Banner is uniquely qualified to study the Hulk, though his experience in large-animal handling seems limited. This morning, however, it's just Rogers and Barton, and they're nearly finished eating.

There's a large artist's portfolio sitting on the breakfast table, a box of pencils and charcoal on top of it. As Rogers puts his plate in the sink, he tells Barton he's going to class, and Barton nods and grunts, barely awake.

"You should come with me," he invites, seeing my glances at the portfolio case now slung under his arm. "We'll get you a doughnut on the way."

An invitation from Captain America is hard to ignore.

 

STEVE ROGERS, it turns out, is not only a soldier and a hero but also an artist. His class is a three-hour figure-drawing session, complete with nude model. For all his blushes around the topic of sex when he's with the Avengers, he seems intimately at home with the human form. Watching him draw is difficult at first, perhaps more for him than for me. He seems self-conscious about his audience. But eventually he is swept up in the art, and his hand moves freely, sketching out shapes and shading lines precisely. He is not perhaps the most skilled artist in the class, but he clearly has talent.

Between poses, while the model takes breaks, he doodles little cartoons and comics in the corners of his paper. His favorite seems to be a cavorting monkey in a variety of costumes.

"Captain Monkey," he explains. "Back when I was selling bonds instead of fighting, I used to draw him a lot. Kinda got in the habit. He's a performing monkey that got loose from the circus. Now he tries out different jobs."

"You should do a webcomic," I say, and he looks perplexed for a minute before he visibly shifts into agreement.

"Maybe," he says pleasantly. I see him write, in the corner of the page, _webcomic._

"Do you know what that is?" I ask.

"Not really," he admits, turning back to his drawing. Captain Rogers blushes easily. "I...when people say something I don't understand, I write it down and use Google to look it up later. It doesn't happen that often anymore."

"You've been...awake for nearly a year," I say. "You clearly like art. I would have thought you'd have stumbled over the concept sooner."

"Been a little busy," he replies, steel in his voice. Later, in the Avengers common room, I will notice the contents of the bookshelf -- in amongst science fiction and romance novels, texts on engineering and war history, and hefty volumes of Russian literature (in the original Russian) there is an entire section dedicated to art. Scholarly works on modernism and postmodernism, coffee-table books about to Frank Lloyd Wright and 50's pulp illustration, anthologies of advertising graphics, volume upon volume of comic books, biographies of Andy Warhol and Picasso. It is staggering, how much Captain America must have needed to learn.

He works diligently for the remaining hour of class, and at the end he has several sheets of charcoal-on-newsprint life studies. His teacher tells him he's coming along, and points out a few places where he could improve. Rogers listens, nodding soberly, and tucks the sheets away.

"We should go back to the Tower," he says.

"Fight practice?"

"Yep."

"Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner still holding out?"

He seems surprised, then rolls his eyes and asks, "Thor?"

"He says you're working on them."

"They'll come around. They're a little suspicious."

"You've been roughed up by the press before."

He looks surprised as we exit into the sunlight of Manhattan. "Well, I suppose. But that's not why."

"Why, then?"

"They're extraordinary people. Extraordinary people generally face extraordinary struggles. All of them have good reason to be mistrustful. It might seem like fight practice isn't exactly where they'd be, I don't know, vulnerable? But it's where they bond as a team."

"You say they. Do you not include yourself?"

He looks thoughtful for a long time. "Well, it hasn't exactly been a peach for me, but -- I always felt what I had to face, I had to face before I became a soldier, not after. I did my struggling in private, nobody much watching me. Some of the others -- Bruce and Tony especially -- didn't have that advantage. Still," he adds, more cheerfully, "if all we had for public exposure was bad options, you're the best of them, and they know it."

"They do?"

"Sure. Why do you think we picked you?"

"I didn't know you were the ones who asked for me."

"Dr. Banner read some of your stuff on the Hulk. Nobody was pro-Hulk before the Chitauri, but you managed to try."

Before the Chitauri invasion, New York knew Hulk as the monster that nearly destroyed Harlem. The spin was furious from the army, and I was suspicious of it. Between the lines I tried to convey that someone was bullshitting someone, and until we knew who, we couldn't lay all the blame for this at the feet of a creature which clearly didn't have much in the way of higher reasoning skills. I guess I succeeded.

"When will I get to talk to him?" I ask. "One-on-one, I mean."

"Eventually," he says, confirming that the Avengers are deftly coordinating my experience.

"Can I speak to the Hulk?" I ask. "Do you think he'd let me?"

He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, startled. "Do you want to?"

"He's a member of your team. He doesn't seem like he'd be easy to talk to, but clearly something happened between Harlem and the Chitauri. He obeyed orders. He saved lives. Specifically, he saved Tony Stark's life. I've seen the film footage," I say. "I saw you tell him what to do and him nod in agreement. He might be a monster, but he's not a _monster._ "

"I see," Rogers says, starting to walk again. "I'll tell Dr. Banner that. It may help your case."

That evening after dinner (pizza; it's Stark's night to "cook") I find a small cartoon pinned to my door: Captain Monkey, in a stylish fedora with a press pass tucked in the hatband, a notebook clenched in one paw. He stares up, wide-eyed, tail brushed out in panic, at a giant, looming Hulk. Underneath, the cartoon is captioned, "What do you do for fun, Mr. Hulk?"

 

[ ](http://knottahooker.tumblr.com)

 

NEW YORK seems to be a nexus of superhero activity. Maybe, like with a good bagel recipe, there's something in the water.

Of the Avengers, one is a New York native and another three chose to live in New York prior to the Battle of Manhattan; only Dr. Banner and Thor are newcomers to the city. There are rumors of other heroes too, some of which were floating around even before the Chitauri. Most of them remain urban myths, for now -- a friend of a friend saw one once, or someone heard somewhere that they were sighted during the Battle of Manhattan.

The three most commonly mentioned are Daredevil, a demonic acrobat commonly spoken of in Hell's Kitchen; Spider-man, a blue-suited hero who seems to have a supernatural ability to climb walls, and possibly to fly; and Power Man, a Harlem-based legend with bulletproof skin. Spider-man supposedly helped evacuate a hospital during the Battle of Manhattan, and Power Man is said to have kept a building from collapsing on top of several families when Hulk destroyed large swathes of Harlem. Whether these three men are real, and whether Daredevil is even male, are still hotly debated.

"I saw Daredevil last night," Barton announces on Saturday morning. Apparently superheroes get the weekend off too; it's ten in the morning and most of them are gathered in the living room, eating breakfast and watching cartoons. They are not the cartoons one finds on an ordinary network channel; Captain Rogers prefers classic Looney Tunes, which alternate with old episodes of Animaniacs, a show Romanov seems to enjoy. Only Stark is absent, presumably dining in privacy with Ms. Potts.

"What were you doing in Hell's Kitchen?" Dr. Banner asks, sounding a little paternal.

"Nightclub," Barton replies. "Left around midnight. Swear to god I saw something with horns and a kick-ass pair of nunchuks."

"Probably Eskrima sticks," Romanov offers.

"Maybe. They had a line between them. Guess you could use them that way," Barton says thoughtfully. "Anyway, I was on this roof -- "

"Of the nightclub?" Banner asks.

"No, well, okay, I left through the nightclub roof but no, I was just, you know, doing some night stealth practice," Barton says, like this is an ordinary thing to do, no different from going to the gym or buying a sandwich. The others accept it as such. "And I felt like someone was watching me. Look to my left, nothing, check my six, nothing. Look to my right, across the street, there's this gargoyle perched on the wall, only then it moves and it's totally a guy. With horns, in some kind of red suit."

"I bet he doesn't actually have horns," Captain Rogers offers. "I mean, that kind of thing would stick out, even in New York."

"They're a kickass part of his cowl, then. I want some," Barton replies.

"I do not believe he exists," Thor interrupts.

"I saw him!"

"No. If he existed, why would he not come to us? Surely he would wish to join our band of warriors."

"I don't know," Romanov says. "If I didn't know you boys, I might think twice too."

"Well, then you must explain these things," Thor says, and I realize he's talking to me. "You must tell this Daredevil if he exists that he should show himself and join us."

"Some people are shy," Captain Rogers says. "I've met Spider-man. He says he'd rather work alone. I guess he's got family to protect."

"When did you meet Spider-man?" Barton asks. "You didn't tell us you met Spider-man."

"He's pulling your leg," Dr. Banner says. "Or trying to pull Spider-man's. You are reporting on all this, after all," he adds to me. None of them seem able to forget that, I think ruefully.

"No, I met Spider-man," Captain Rogers insists. "On the Helicarrier."

Everyone's attention is on him now, despite the fact that onscreen, Wakko is singing the names of all the US States (and their capitols).

"Did you file a report?" Romanov asks.

"No. Why get the man in trouble?"

"What happened?" Barton demands.

"Nothing much. I saw someone in a spidery costume, you know, with web designs on the cowl -- he's got a full face mask, whaddaya call that, a hood? Helmet?" Rogers considers it. "Well, anyway, he was lurking around."

"What did you do?" Thor demands.

"Grabbed him," Rogers says complacently. "Took a few minutes, he's a slippery guy. Gave him a good shake by the scruff of his neck and asked him what he thought he was doing. He said he just wanted a look around."

"How'd he get on the Helicarrier?"

"Oh, it was in dry-dock, getting the engines looked at. I wasn't really supposed to be there myself," Rogers admits, looking faintly embarrassed. "I was just poking around to get a better idea of the layout. I guess he was doing the same. Anyway, I told him to scram because most other folks in the area would probably take a shot at him. I offered to arrange a real tour for him and said if he was half as good as people talked about, he ought to consider stopping by the Tower to meet everyone. He said no thanks, and lit out of there like his shoes were on fire once I let him go."

"You didn't try to bring him in?" Barton asks.

"Well, I offered. But why bother picking a fight? He clearly didn't want to be brought, and he wasn't doing any harm. Guy gets enough flak from the Bugle without us piling on him. He does good work," he adds approvingly. "Best to leave him alone."

"I can't believe you didn't report the security breach to Hill," Romanov says, clearly annoyed by this casual approach to superheroing.

"Oh, I sealed it up," Rogers says. "I found the hole and chewed a few guys out over it. I think they thought it was a spot inspection. Believe me, by the time I was done that place was tighter than a pig in a chimney."

Romanov seems appeased by this, if still not entirely happy. "Next time you catch someone in a full-body spandex suit lurking around S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, you make a report," she says.

"I doubt he'll lurk again anytime soon. I think I gave him a pretty good scare," Rogers replies, looking amused. "But I promise if he comes around I'll tell teacher. Anyway, you can tell your readers, I know he's real," he says to me.

There you have it, straight from the mouth of Captain America: Daredevil might or might not have horns, but Spider-man definitely exists.


	2. Chapter 2

BY MONDAY morning I've attended a press conference with Tony Stark, watched Steve Rogers make roasted chicken with stuffing, learned from Natasha Romanov how to clean and load a .38, and witnessed Clint Barton killing seagulls on top of Stark Tower with a bow and arrow. There is, apparently, good eating on a seagull if you can't get duck or squab, but he unapologetically hunts them for sport. 

I still haven't seen the Avengers drilling as a team, however, nor have I spoken to Dr. Banner alone. If Stark isn't nearby, interrupting whenever I attempt it, then Captain Rogers is dragging me off to speak to someone else or Clint-and-Natasha are politely and firmly deflecting any attempts to get near. Dr. Banner himself seems equal parts amused by their defensive behavior and glad of it; he clearly doesn't want to talk to me. 

Jarvis is the closest thing I have to an ally, perhaps because he's capable of being objective -- in some ways, compelled to be.

"So can you tell me," I ask him, Monday afternoon -- my afternoons during the week will clearly be the time to write up my notes -- "Why Dr. Banner doesn't want to speak with me?"

"I cannot state Dr. Banner's direct motivations, as he has not informed me of them," Jarvis replies. 

"Can you guess?"

"Judging by interactions prior to your arrival and in some subsequent cases, I am not entirely sure the decision is his," Jarvis tells me. "Certainly his fellow Avengers have taken it upon themselves to protect him."

"Why? He can't be all that fragile, if he's the Hulk's handler. I can only imagine that takes balls of steel."

"Dr. Banner is decidedly not fragile," Jarvis says. 

"Okay, let's try it this way. Can you tell me where he's been since he disappeared? Is that information you can access?"

"Dr. Banner is very well-traveled. Not all of his travels were of his own devising."

"Was he hunting the Hulk?" The Hulk's first appearance was around the time Banner vanished. It would make sense. 

"No. We do not refer to the Hulk as something to be hunted," Jarvis says, sounding almost angry. 

"Would you ask Dr. Banner if I can speak with him privately, then?" 

"I will ask," Jarvis agrees, and there's a brief pause. "Dr. Banner is unavailable at present. He does, however, indicate that you may attend tomorrow's fight training."

"Is he sure? Does he have everyone's permission?"

"Tomorrow's fight training will not be at Stark Tower," Jarvis tells me. "Please pack a small overnight bag. Your flight will leave from the Stark Tower helipad at six-thirty tomorrow morning."

"Come again?" 

"The Hulk is not generally allowed to train in enclosed spaces," Jarvis says, which is clearly all the information I'm going to receive. 

 

TUESDAY MORNING I am standing on the Stark Tower helipad, much higher off the ground than I generally prefer to be. Along one edge is the "loading" platform for Stark's armor. When he lands on the helipad as Iron Man, he touches down on a walkway stretching out over nothing, barely three feet wide. I look away, to where the Avengers are emerging, some more awake than others. Romanov has a cheerful overnight bag covered in yellow tulips and a large rifle case over one shoulder. Barton has a similar case, as well as a quiver and a second case for his bow. Thor has a hammer and a smile. A small designer-brand rolling suitcase, probably Stark's, sits nearby. 

Our transport is not a helicopter, as I had expected, but one of the sleek S.H.I.E.L.D. "Quinjets". Its gleaming design is slightly marred by how delicate it looks. Barton stomps into the rear hatch, stowing his equipment efficiently before taking the pilot's seat. Romanov, a step behind him, takes co-pilot.

"Well," Captain Rogers says, emerging with a military duffel bag under one arm. Dr. Banner trails behind him; for some reason he's wearing scrubs. "Everyone here?"

"Clint and Natasha are doing preflight," Stark says, dropping out of the sky in the Iron Man armor. "Don't forget my stuff."

Even with Stark's penchant for showboating, very few people have seen the armor this closely for any length of time. Minute adjustments ripple around his legs, keeping him hovering. The white light blasting out of his boots puts off no heat. The Iron Man armor was famously described as "a work of mayhem, science, and genius" by Christine Everhart, but the brutal grandiosity of it isn't really evident until you see it closely. 

The others are used to it. Rogers just rolls his eyes and grabs the handle of Stark's bag, lifting it up as if to say, _Happy now?_

Stark nods and flips down his faceplate, and a few seconds later he's out of reach, drifting over empty space and waiting for the Quinjet to lift off. 

"Where are we going?" I ask Captain Rogers, as we climb into the jet and begin locking down our bags.

"Middle of Nowhere, Ohio," Rogers replies.

"Why?"

"Room to stretch," says Dr. Banner, stepping in behind me.

For a moment there's a strange dance: Banner turns to sit in the seat next to mine, Rogers tries to get inbetween us to take the seat instead, and I go to sit down as Banner gives Rogers a distinct _nothin' doin'_ face. 

We end up with me behind the co-pilot's seat, Banner next to me, and Rogers and Thor across from us, behind Barton. Liftoff is so smooth I almost don't realize we're in the air, until I see Iron Man flying along next to us. He shoots me a very clear set of rock'n'roll horns through the window. 

"Being fair to them," Banner says to me in an undertone, "I can be a little nervous sometimes. And I'm not very fond of public exposure."

"Did Captain Rogers tell you what I said?" I ask. "About the Hulk?"

"He did," Banner replies. "This is slightly more complicated than whether the Hulk is a force for good or evil, however." 

"Is this place we're going...where he's kept?" I ask.

"No. More where he's let loose," he says with a dry smile. "You'll understand. Tony scouted you a perfect seat for the event. The important thing to remember," he adds, "is that the Hulk doesn't kill you if you don't piss him off." 

"So noted," I tell him. 

Rogers settles in with a book, once we're outside the New York limits, and Thor wanders up to the front to speak with Barton and Romanov. Stark keeps pace outside the window, apparently enjoying himself. 

"I've been researching your disappearance," I tell Banner. 

"Found anything scandalous?" he asks with a smile.

"There's surprisingly little hard evidence," I tell him. "Nearly everyone still thinks you're dead."

"That's been preferable, until now," he says. "Until we were sure -- "

He breaks off, and Rogers looks up.

"Bruce?" he asks, clearly checking in. 

"I'm fine, Steve," Banner replies. "Go back to your book."

Rogers is reading _The Catcher In The Rye_. It's a worn, well-thumbed copy with a library label on the spine. 

"What did you need to be sure of?" I ask.

"Many things," Banner answers. "I'm sorry to be cryptic. We've found it's best for people to meet Hulk before asking a lot of questions."

"Why?"

"Most people who meet him don't understand him well enough to accept the answers they're given."

"And you think I'm one of them?"

"I think there's a chance you're not. I've found compassion shows its face in unlikely places," he says. 

"Does the Hulk need compassion?"

"Doesn't everyone?" he says. 

"The other Avengers, they understand?"

"It's unlikely to find half a dozen people, randomly chosen, who will," he says, considering this. "But the others are unique. They understand the weight that comes with their gifts. Tony calls it a terrible privilege."

"Hulk saved his life during the battle."

"Hulk owes him."

"How so?"

"Tony doesn't see the monster," Banner says. "Tony is perfectly capable of identifying threats, sometimes before anyone else does. If he ever saw the Hulk as a threat, which is likely, he chose to ignore it in favor of less evident qualities. Cap too -- he sees the best in everyone he meets, takes us all at face value until we give him a reason to think otherwise." 

Rogers is engrossed in his book, eyes moving quickly, reading fast enough to remind me he isn't an ordinary person. Outside, Iron Man does a barrel roll to entertain himself. 

"And what face value does the Hulk have?" I ask.

"Well," Banner says, "he's awfully good at smashing things. But we are discovering he's also loyal, and capable of telling right from wrong. He's like a child."

"A violent, indestructible child."

"Children are violent when they've been hurt," Banner says. 

"What changed?"

"Between Harlem and the Chitauri?" he asks knowingly. I nod. "Nothing. Well, not much. Public perception, I think. There was no way to see him as the aggressive party, with the Chitauri. Five other people were there doing the exact same thing, and there was no covering up that the Chitauri were there."

"Are you saying there was a cover-up in the Harlem incident?"

"I wasn't there, so I can't say," he replies. "Anyway, this is better. With the Avengers, Hulk's playing in his own league, with people who aren't afraid of him because they're on his level. He knows they're not afraid, so he trusts them, because traditionally the only reaction he's had from fearful people is violence." 

"He likes the Avengers?"

"As well as he likes anyone."

"What about you?"

Banner sighs. "We have an understanding."

 

WE ARRIVE in what truly is the middle of nowhere with little fanfare, Stark touching down at the same time as the Quinjet. The air smells like wet grass, and the little bowl-shaped valley below us is visibly scarred from previous encounters here. 

"Stark Industries land," Stark says, standing at the edge of a jagged overlook. "Borders on a national park. Don't know why I bought it. Probably drunk at the time. Still, it's useful now," he adds. "Your job is to stay here and not get killed."

"The odds of you being killed are really very low," Romanov puts in. 

"No sudden moves," Barton says, already slip-sliding down the hill towards the flatter part of the landscape. 

"You'll be fine," Rogers insists, clapping me on the shoulder. "Here's an earpiece. You can listen to us through it," he continues, handing me a little plug for one ear. "And I brought some field glasses for you."

"Stay put," Stark says. Thor is already at the base of the overlook. Romanov and Rogers follow Barton down. Banner wraps an arm around Stark's shoulders, and the armor lifts off, carrying him to the valley floor. 

Within five minutes, everyone is down on the grassy flatland. I lift the field glasses to my eyes, to see if I can spot Banner indicating that the Hulk is arriving. Instead, I see him taking off his scrub shirt, folding it neatly and setting it aside. Next he strips out of the simple shoes he's wearing, and then out of his pants. Underneath he's wearing shiny spandex bicycle shorts in a bright purple. They look about a size too big. A quick check without the glasses shows the Avengers have formed a loose, wide circle around him.

I am not expecting what comes next.

Banner glances at Stark, who gives him a nod, and then closes his eyes. His fists clench, and then he seems to unfurl. His thighs and biceps swell, chest expanding impossibly wide, skin flushing deep green as his body twists outward. It's over before I register what I'm seeing, before the realization sets in.

Dr. Bruce Banner is not Hulk's keeper, except in the most basic sense of the word. He is Hulk. 

I barely have time to think _ah, the disappearance makes sense now_ before Hulk glances around and roars one word, easily audible even at this distance. A great, basso profundo declaration of intent:

"GAME!"

He brings his massive arms around, shoulders bunching, and slams both fists into the ground. The Avengers fall back, Thor and Iron Man leaping into the air. 

At first, I don't understand what's happening; it looks like the Avengers have suddenly and completely lost control of this massive force of nature. He lunges for them, one after another, grunting and roaring as they dodge around him. He swats away arrows armed with impact-explosive heads and almost manages to grab Black Widow before she flips up and over his low-bent shoulders, rolling in the grass on the far side of him. Captain America draws his attention away while Iron Man drops low to scoop her up. He flies her to the edge of the commotion and is darting upward again when Hulk executes a magnificent standing vertical leap, easily fifty feet -- 

And swats gently at one of Iron Man's legs. 

He could grab him -- he could easily crush him -- but instead he just taps him hard enough to send him into a spin, which he recovers before he hits the ground. 

"All right," I hear Stark say, as I shove the nearly-forgotten earbud into my ear. "I'm It."

It is a game, I realize, trying to make sense of the lack of follow-through from Hulk. They're playing tag. And the occasional roars I hear, as Hulk dodges blasts of light from Iron Man's palms, are laughter. 

The tactical advantages of the game are evident. The Avengers are trading off being the bad guy, whoever the bad guy may be, working as a team against someone who already knows their weaknesses. Hulk -- surely a stress on Dr. Banner -- gets to come out and play. Everyone gets some time to work with him, to train him. Sometimes they stop, reassemble, and repeat certain patterns over and over until Hulk is agreeably confident of re-creating them in battle. Mostly, at least over the radio system, they crack wise with each other. 

Hulk doesn't often speak in words, though after about an hour he says, "Wrestle!" and the others cheer excitedly. Thor lands and sets his hammer aside, while the team settles on the grass -- Rogers leaning back on his arms like a kid watching fireworks, Stark with his faceplate flipped up, Barton and Romanov cross-legged and sharing a thermos of something. 

There's the briefest of pauses and then, without warning, Thor and Hulk dive for one another. 

Watching Thor handle Hulk, all on his own, reminds me that neither of them are simply large people. Seeing them fight is like witnessing titans in battle: a raw display of incredible power. 

Stark is eating pretzel sticks. 

Captain Rogers peels an apple with a knife, eating the peel as he goes before eating the apple itself. Barton briefly wanders off to hunt for lizards, or at least a lizard is what he wanders back with, letting it run over his hand and up his arm. Romanov just watches the fight intently. 

Thor and Hulk go for two throws each before Hulk settles the matter, pinning Thor to the ground, and Stark gets up to try his luck against the giant. Unlike Thor, who stayed earthbound, Iron Man brings a vertical dimension to the fight. He occasionally tries to get away by going up, and Hulk leaps after him each time. They seem to have set an agreed-upon ceiling of about twenty feet.

I miss some of this match, because I'm working my way slowly down from my vantage point. I want to see Hulk closer-to, and I worry he'll change back before I get my chance. Captain Rogers sees me coming and doesn't wave me off, so I eventually get to within ten feet of the clashing bodies. 

Hulk manages to pin Iron Man, thick knees resting on (and somehow not crushing) the elbow-joints of the armor. Stark pops his faceplate up and says "Good game, Big Green," and Hulk eases off him. He turns as Stark gets to his feet, and I can tell the moment he scents me before he even sees me. Suddenly all the attention of what must be eight hundred pounds of angry Hulk is on me. 

He comes forward, and I can see Rogers casually standing up, hopefully ready to defend me if necessary. 

Hulk towers over me, looking down. There's a long, considering silence. 

"Hey, Mop Top," Stark says. Hulk grunts. "We brought a friend."

I am possibly more terrified than I have ever been in my entire life. My voice is a high, thin sound as I say, "Hulk, I -- "

"Yes," he interrupts. It's a clear, impatient _I know why you're here_. I glance at Stark, who is looking faintly surprised. Hulk's mouth opens on thick, blunt white teeth before he says, "Now you?"

He raises his arms, hands clenched into fists, a boxing stance. 

I realize something profound: Hulk is _screwing with me._

Just like that, the tension dissipates, though the Avengers are still watchful. Hulk leans down and pokes me gently in the shoulder with a finger as thick around as my wrist. He seems curious, like a dog inspecting someone new.

"Can I ask you a few questions?" I say, as he sniffs me. He huffs and nods. 

"I guess you don't always get to make the decisions around here," I say, and he seems to be waiting for a question mark. "Do you like being on the Avengers?" 

He huffs again, like this is a stupid question even for him. "Yes," he growls. 

"Who's your favorite?"

That throws him. He looks around, thoughtfully. When he narrows his eyes at Thor, everyone else laughs, some in-joke I'm not in on. Finally he looks back at me and says, "Tony." 

Stark looks genuinely thrilled. The others seem fascinated. Normally, Hulk's face is somewhere between "rictus of rage" and "scowl of annoyance", but I can see also that he's concentrating extremely hard. It's not that he's not processing information, but talking seems like a challenge. 

"What do you think of Captain America's leadership of the team?" I ask, going for something a little more complex. Hulk screws up his face. He looks at Captain Rogers, almost pleadingly. 

Finally he points at him and says, "Smash!", then looks expectant. I look at Captain Rogers, who is studying the Hulk with something almost like awe in his face. 

"I don't presume to speak for him most of the time," Rogers says, not taking his eyes off Hulk. "But I think I get it. The first order I ever gave him, I just told him to smash. He knew what to do from there. I trusted him to work out who were his enemies." He glances at me. "I think -- well, I hope, I suppose -- that he's saying I understand him."

Hulk nods vigorously. "Right!" he bellows, laughing, clearly pleased. "Right!" 

I have one question I really have to ask, and I can tell that soon this interview will be over. It's a risk, of course, but I've come this far. While Hulk is a ball of rage, he doesn't seem to have quite as much of a hair-trigger as people have claimed. 

"What happened in Harlem?" I ask. 

Stark sucks in a breath. Barton glances at Romanov, some kind of tell. Hulk is concentrating so hard I'm actually worried he'll blow a vein somewhere. 

Finally he says three words to me.

"Abo...mination," he says, and then, "Ross. Sterrrrrns."

I look to the others. Romanov doesn't acknowledge me. Captain Rogers gives me a shrug. Hulk has clearly exhausted his vocabulary for the day. I'm a journalist, after all; I can take it from there.

"One last question?" I ask.

He growls, but he doesn't shake his head.

"Is there anything you want to say to the people who will read about this?" I ask. "To the public?" 

He looks, curiously, to Stark. 

"Up to you, Big Green," Stark says. Hulk seems bothered by this. Perhaps he's just not ready for the question. 

Then he swings back to me, his big body surprisingly graceful despite the massive size of it. 

"Be nice," he says, clearly struggling. "Hulk fights too."

It's a startling, almost desperate plea for compassion. I nod. 

"Thank you," I say. "It's been a pleasure to meet you."

That gets me an eyeroll and a grin. He rears back, roaring, and the amazing body before me begins to shrink, to pink up, folding in on itself until Bruce Banner is standing there instead, looking dazed. 

He sways on his feet and staggers a little. Romanov darts forward to catch him, slinging his arm around her shoulders, a hand pressed to his stomach to support him. 

"How'd he do?" Dr. Banner asks. 

"He did fine," Captain Rogers answers. 

"Hey, you're still alive," Dr. Banner says, noticing me. "Awesome."

"He's a little loopy after, usually," Barton tells me, as Stark cracks a bottle of water and puts it in Banner's free hand. The Avengers close ranks around him for the moment, Stark speaking quietly in Banner's ear as Thor ruffles his hair. Captain Rogers takes over for Romanov, supporting him until he seems a little steadier on his feet. Rogers takes some kind of snack bar out of a pocket on his uniform belt and unwraps it. Banner eats it in about two bites, ravenously. 

He doesn't look like he can make the walk back up to where the Quinjet is waiting, but Thor solves the problem -- once the water is drained and the food is gone, they help him back into his clothing and Thor wraps a massive arm around Dr. Banner's waist. With a nod from Banner he _leaps_ , a soaring bound that takes them back towards the jet. Stark follows in the armor. 

I guess the rest of us walk. 

"I think you have some different questions now," Romanov says to me. It's the first time I think she's really voluntarily spoken with me. "From the ones you had before."

"A few," I admit. "Is this something I can publish?"

"We wouldn't have shown it to you if you couldn't."

"This will be a nightmare for him."

"Trust me," she replies, "he's had worse."

"It's amazing," I tell her. 

"You don't know the half of it," Captain Rogers says. 

"How do you mean?" 

"That's the longest I've ever heard him talk," he replies. "I've never seen him hold a conversation like that."

"Tony's been working with Hulk on vocalization, but he hasn't been able to get more than two words out of him at a time," Romanov says. 

"Bruce'll be pleased," Barton says to Romanov. "I hope Tony got film of it."

"Tony's got film of everything," she says dismissively. 

We continue towards the Quinjet, quieter now; the Avengers are tired. Seeing Hulk among them, working with them or deliberately against them in a game, gives dual impressions. He seems like a wild animal from a nature park, some kind of jungle cat or wolf: trained, perhaps, but not tamed, and certainly not domesticated. Wild animals are dangerous to strangers, to people who don't know how to interact with them. Even their trainers can never let their guard down. 

But speaking with him makes it clear he's not a wild animal. The very first thing he did was crack a joke at me. He also knew me and knew why I was there, which makes me wonder if he watches through Banner's eyes, or if they somehow communicate. I wonder how much of Banner was restraining him when we spoke. Watching him speak was like watching someone with neurological difficulties struggle to communicate -- the brains were clearly there, it was just getting past the barrier of speech that was an issue. When he couldn't get the words out, he found workarounds, getting others to speak for him. 

Stark will confirm this, eventually. His work getting Hulk to speak is based in techniques used by special-education teachers to help children with severe autism communicate. It's hard to imagine the sharp-witted, strutting billionaire trying to patiently gentle a few words out of someone easily twice his size in every direction, but there is a deeper connection between Stark and Hulk than between the others. "Tony" is, after all, Hulk's favorite. 

When we reach the Quinjet, Banner has changed from the scrubs into jeans and a warm-looking sweater; he's slouched in one of the seats in the jet, already half-asleep. Captain Rogers steps into the Quinjet and begins taking off his uniform gloves and boots. The others congregate nearby, politely avoiding looking as Captain America, for some unknown reason, strips down in the jet. 

"What's going on?" I ask. 

"Steve's got a costume change," Stark says. "He's not coming with us."

"Why? Where are we going?"

"There's a little town west of here," Barton tells me. 

"Glorious R----, Ohio!" Thor says enthusiastically. I look questioningly at the others. 

"We're headed to R---- to get a big lunch and let Bruce sleep the Hulk off," Stark continues, rolling his eyes at Thor. "We'll stay there tonight. Cap'll catch up with us tomorrow morning."

"What, he's walking?"

"Hiking the park," Barton says.

"How far away is R----?"

"Bout forty miles," Stark replies. 

"In two days?"

"He'll make thirty of them before sundown." Stark shugs. "He likes to camp, I don't pretend to get it. The rest of us are sleeping in very nice beds in a hotel tonight."

"Wait till you see the wallpaper," Barton tells me. 

"So he's just going to...camp his way home?" 

"More or less. I think it clears his head," Romanov says. Captain Rogers emerges from the jet in a flannel shirt and jeans, with his duffle on his back. 

"Phone check," Stark says. Captain Rogers holds up his phone. "What time you think you'll make town?"

"Ten o'clock? Definitely by ten. Probably more like eight," he says. He looks excited, a reminder that he might have his roots in another era and he might lead the Avengers, but at the end of the day, Captain Rogers is the same age as most new college graduates. For the first time, I consider what a weight he must carry. 

"Don't eat any poison ivy," Barton says, and they all troop past him towards the jet. 

"Enjoy your hike," I offer.

"Thanks. I usually do. You'll have fun though. Town's got a decent bar, nice pool hall. Get Clint and Bruce to show you their game."

"Why don't you go with them?" I ask.

"I do, sometimes. Don't get many opportunities to rough it, though, and I like getting out of the city. Never got to go camping as a kid, always wanted to."

"The Boy Scouts don't take asthmatics?" I ask. He gives me a sharp look, then laughs. 

"Well, they sure don't take them camping. But I washed out of the Boy Scouts over a matter of personal honor," he says. 

"Personal honor?"

"Yeah, I punched a fellow scout."

"You what?"

"He was being a jerk."

"Hey, are you coming or do you want Cap to shove you in his backpack and take you along?" Stark calls from the jet.

"You better get going," Captain Rogers says. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

He stays at the edge of the overlook, grass flattening around him as the Quinjet lifts off, and waves until we can't see him anymore. 

 

DR. BANNER is asleep in the jet, propped on Thor's shoulder. At some point while I was speaking with Rogers, Stark shed his armor; it's sitting in the corner, folded into a case, and he's pulling on a pair of impeccably-pressed khaki pants over a black bodysuit that looks like it might be neoprene. As Barton stands to stow his quiver and bow, Stark sits next to Banner and begins taking his pulse, scanning him with various devices. 

"We have a protocol for Hulk," he says without looking at me. "Steve developed it. He really likes protocols. Doesn't always listen to them, but he likes making them. And he always obeys this one."

"What kind of protocol?"

"Well, during a fight, as soon as we're done or look like we will be, first priority is to make sure one of us has eyes on the Hulk, or to find Bruce," Stark says, studying a readout on a StarkPad. "Get him somewhere safe and private, and get him fed."

"One time -- out here, not anywhere in-city -- he came back and he was so fucking hungry he just Hulked the hell out again," Barton puts in from the pilot's seat. 

"That was difficult," Romanov adds. 

"Yeah, we caught up to him again chasing cows on some farm," Stark adds. "Took us an hour to get him to calm down. So, now we put food in his face as soon as we can. We triage any immediate medical needs and get him to transport." 

"If Stark's not there at that point, we call him," Romanov says. 

"I'm trying to get a medical baseline for his biometrics after the Hulk," Stark continues. "His vitals are usually all over the place, but some patterns are emerging."

"Is that useful?"

"Not yet. Could be someday," Stark says, cleaning the crook of Banner's elbow with a swab. He pulls on a pair of surgical gloves. "Hey. Bruce."

Banner stirs, eyes opening.

"Bruce, make a fist for me." 

There's a groan, but he does as Stark asks, and gives up two vials of blood with barely a murmur when the needle goes in. His blood looks perfectly ordinary. The vials go into a box which is locked with a scan of Banner's thumb. 

"Of course, I'd love to get a brain scan," Stark continues, stowing the box. "Actually I'd kill to get a few scans of Hulk's brain, but I doubt that's going to happen. Not for a while, anyway."

"He's smarter than I thought," I offer.

"Sure. Today was an exceptionally good day."

"How smart do you think he is?"

"Smart's a bad word for it," Stark replies. "It's more cognition. He doesn't process on an adult level, and we're not sure how much he understands of cause and effect if effect doesn't follow immediately. He's smarter than your average toddler, certainly. Probably somewhere between five and fifteen, developmentally? Before today I'd have said ten at the oldest but he is always surprising us," he adds, almost absently.

"Why do you think he has trouble talking?"

Stark glances at Banner, then at Thor. The two men seem to communicate silently for a minute before Stark sets the pad aside and leans back.

There have been plenty of photographs of Tony Stark since his return from captivity in 2008, but very few of the "reactor", the glowing blue device in his chest which serves a medical purpose Stark's been cagey about revealing. He seems to treat it like something it would be indecent to show in public. A well-known portrait of him for GQ, two years ago, showed him in a pair of black boxer-briefs, body intentionally on display, with a black bandage wrapped tightly around his chest. Only the blue up-glow against his chest was visible. 

When he leans back now, however, the reactor is clearly visible -- the body suit he wears has a cutout for it. A perfect circle of metal encases what looks like a plain plastic night light, with a metal triangle inset into the circle. Its light is dim but constant. 

It's a fascination -- a distraction. For a second it works well. He can see me looking at it, and he gives me a humorless smile when I look back up at his face. 

He rises, going to a compartment and taking out a thick sweater, pulling it on to hide the light. "I think it's a developmental issue," he says, answering my half-forgotten question. "Hulk's first few stabs at existence were traumatic, to say the least. Neglected and abused children sometimes fail to develop certain neural pathways, or if they do, they fail to use them. Mutism, whether it's neurological or psychological, is a documented reaction to intense childhood stress."

"You think he's a traumatized child?"

"It's just a theory. I have a few others. It sort of misses the point, though."

"What's that?" I ask. Stark sits down next to Dr. Banner again. 

"The point is twofold: first, he's not stupid, and second, he's capable of discerning bullshit when he's shown it. If he can't tell you or me or anyone else what he's thinking, well, that's an issue, but it's just a symptom, and frankly for me it's not a problem. He gets it. He knows when to step the hell up. That was Bruce's problem, when we first met."

"He didn't know when to step up?"

"He didn't believe he had the right," Thor says, startling me a little. "Sometimes the greatest warriors are those who are the most reluctant to do battle." 

"I told him he needed to strut a little more," Stark adds. It's clear that of the Avengers, Dr. Banner is his favorite too. "Now he's strutting, and Hulk's talking more. It's not a miracle cure, but we all take what we can get." 

I keep thinking about what I know of Dr. Banner's past -- specifically, the fact that he disappeared around the time the Hulk made his entrance on the "giant destructive creature" scene. Certain things make more sense, and certain things make less.

"How did this happen?" I ask. "Clearly he wasn't born this way. You know, don't you? What happened?"

Stark nods. "I do know. But I'm not telling you."

"Classified?"

"Not my place to tell," Stark replies. "You want to know what happened to him, you'll have to ask him. If he wants to tell you, he will."

 

THE TOWN we eventually reach is small, clustered around one long main street. There's a factory at one end of town which more or less provides all the jobs there are; it's perhaps not surprising to find the swooping Stark logo adorning the front of the building. There's a Catholic church and a Baptist church, a couple of bars, two restaurants, a supermarket, and a school. We land in someone's backyard. 

A woman emerges onto the porch of the largish house we've landed behind, waving as she wipes her hands on a rag. 

"Hotel R-----," Stark says in an undertone to me. "Eight rooms. Best eggs benedict on the planet."

Dr. Banner is awake and looking less peaky than he did before; he staggers out with the rest of us as the apparent proprietor comes to meet us. 

"Boys," she says with a smile. "Natasha. Good to see y'all. Who's your friend?"

Introductions are made all around, as we're shuffled into the house through the back door, past a kitchen and up some stairs. The rooms are generously sized, with televisions so old they need converter boxes to receive digital broadcasts. There are brightly-colored flannel sheets on the beds, and the wallpaper, as Barton warned, is spectacular. Sort of like if William Morris had a violent fight with a My Little Pony. 

We settle our belongings and I can hear someone showering, the pipes clanging gently in the walls. I have only a few minutes to get some basic notes down on the morning's events before there's a knock on the door. Barton, in civilian clothes, puts his head in to invite me to lunch. 

With everyone freshly washed and out of uniform, we could be tourists on some kind of road trip. If the local residents know who the Avengers are, they don't give any sign, though the waitress at the restaurant greets Stark by name and seems especially happy to see Barton. He flirts casually with her as we're seated, and I'm the only person she asks about a drink. Apparently the others have standing orders. 

There's another odd little seating-debate that takes place as Barton and Banner both reach for the chair next to me at the same time. Barton defers the way Rogers did earlier, eventually, and Dr. Banner gives me a smile as he pulls up his chair. 

"So?" he asks, faux-casual, as the others study the single-page plastic menu. 

"It's an impressive transformation," I reply truthfully. 

"Not usually the first reaction I get."

"I can imagine. Have many people encountered it?"

"If I say _not many still living_ , that sounds a lot like a threat," he says drily. "But the truth is, most of the people who've seen it happen were soldiers, and Hulk doesn't like soldiers."

"He likes Captain America." 

"Cap's the exception that proves the rule," Banner replies. "You were down with us by the time I came back. Did something happen?"

"You're not aware? Of what he does?"

"Only distantly. Impressions, sometimes."

"Well, I got an exclusive interview with the Hulk."

"Yeah? What'd that consist of? Grunt, roar, wheeze?" he asks, with an odd self-deprecating note in his voice. 

"Apparently he was surprisingly vocal, for him," I reply. "I've had meaner people give me less than he did."

Banner's eyes flicker. "You asked about Harlem, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought he felt sad."

"Why does Harlem make him sad?"

Banner shakes his head. "He knows. I don't. Aside from what I've read in the papers, I don't know what happened. Tony thinks there's been a lot of spin. As you do," he adds. "At least if your article on Harlem is any indication." 

I want to ask him what the words mean -- Abomination, Ross, Sterns. But he's clearly still a little fragile, and there's time now that I know. 

"He cracked a joke," I offer. Banner looks surprised. 

"What, like, a knock-knock joke?"

"When I showed up, he'd just finished a couple of wrestling matches," I say. "He looked me up and down and asked if I was next."

Banner blinks at me, clearly shocked by this, and then laughs. 

"Well," he says, delighted. "What do you know about that."

 

THERE'S NOT much to do on a Tuesday afternoon in a town this small. The Avengers have their own personal rituals; Banner, as far as I can tell, is asleep again, Barton was still flirting with the waitress when we left, Romanov has vanished, and Stark tells me Thor knows a rancher nearby who keeps horses. Apparently Thor's fond of horses. Stark is out in the garage next to the hotel, helping our host do something technical and greasy with a car engine. 

The town has very little cell reception but the hotel has wifi, so while the Avengers entertain themselves, I settle in to pester some of my contacts in New York about the Harlem incident. 

Ben Urich is a reporter for the Bugle out of New York, and he's mentored an entire generation of up-and-coming journalists. He's served as a war correspondent, and broken a few political scandals over the years. He also claims to have seen Daredevil, though he killed the story himself when he couldn't get enough corroborating evidence. He spent some time investigating the urban legends about various New York vigilantes and heroes, and he has the largest archive file on the phenomenon of any journalist anywhere. He wasn't on the Harlem story, but he'll know where to start. 

"I always thought there was something a little fishy about that," he tells me over email, when I ask him in carefully vague words about Abomination, Ross, Sterns. "All the official statements came from the military. Not a lot of civilians who were in the area would discuss it. At least not by the time the news media got to them, which took several hours. The army had that place locked down tight. You should check Channel Seven. They had a chopper in the area and I think there was some rumor about confiscated film footage."

Why wasn't that followed through?

"For all I know, it was. It's not really my beat. You said the name Ross was mentioned. That might be General Ross. Thaddeus Ross, but if you Google, try Thunderbolt Ross. He's high up somewhere in the DoD clusterfuck. I think there was an incident between him and Stark at one point."

The incident between Ross and Stark was in a little bar in Bethesda. Details are slim, but apparently Stark -- who doesn't seem like the kind of man to visit Bethesda's military dive bars on a whim -- picked a fight with Ross. Ross tried to have him thrown out, and Stark bought the bar on the spot and had Ross ejected instead. No charges filed on either side, and the bar is now a nice mid-range Italian restaurant, Papa Tony's. They do a decent carbonara. 

How it all must grind on Ross.

"I bet it does," Urich replies, when I make that observation. "I wouldn't try asking him about it."

The name Thaddeus Ross sounds familiar. When I check my notes, I remember why. Some of the wilder conspiracy websites claim Banner may have been murdered for getting a little too close to the general's daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Ross, a scientist working on the same project as Dr. Banner was. Those sites tend not to stay up long. 

"There's been a persistent rumor that Hulk wasn't alone in Harlem," Urich continues. "The military may have put the blame on him because whoever was with him didn't ping anyone's radar and it made for a simpler story. There's never been an explanation for how Hulk got there or how he even exists. If I were a science-fiction writer, I might suggest the military did something they shouldn't and it got loose, but that's an adventure novel, not a news story. You're doing something with S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, aren't you? Can you ask them about it? And if they spill, can I bid on the Bugle's behalf to run the story?" 

I tell him he'll be the first to know if I find anything. Does he think the word _Abomination_ means anything?

"Well, I'm sure a few people have called Hulk that over the years. It might be some kind of military code. Where did you hear it?"

I can't tell him that yet, so I don't, but I thank him for his time and his suggestions. He sends back a few cheerful words of encouragement, and I close my email for the moment. 

Searching "abomination harlem" on the web doesn't turn up much: some Harlem Shake videos, a church website I'd rather not revisit, news stories on crime in the area, and a handful of restaurant reviews. Searching "sterns harlem" brings up mostly stuff on Howard Stern. 

Searching "sterns hulk" doesn't bring up much either, until the second page, when there's a small item about Samuel Sterns, a biochemist who apparently died during the Harlem incident. His body has never been found. 

I came to Stark Tower to do a human-interest piece on the Avengers. I'm not sure now what kind of story I'm writing. 

 

THAT EVENING, the Avengers converge on Mama's Billiards, a bar with a couple of well-kept pool tables and a pretty decent beer selection. They eat bar food and buy rounds. Thor requests a boilermaker. Stark gets what is probably the only martini ever served in that bar. Romanov and Barton drink domestic beer and demolish a basket of fried chicken between them. Banner has a Coke.

"I don't drink that often," he tells me. "Obvious reasons."

"Mean drunk?"

"Not historically, but why take the chance?" 

He has a point, but before I can engage him any further, Barton takes down a pool cue and goes to the bar to get a rack of balls. 

"That's my signal," Banner says, and slides off the stool, taking his Coke with him. I wander over to watch. 

Dr. Bruce Banner has studied physics, among other things; he knows how force and mass interact. Clint Barton has possibly the best aim on the planet. The game is vicious, take-no-prisoners, full of impossible shots and sneaky tricks. Banner bounces the cue ball over the eight to knock one of his in the corner pocket; Barton knocks one of his own in with no less than five ricochets off other balls. Steve Rogers was right. This is not to be missed. 

While Barton lines up to knock in the eight ball for the win, I wonder what Rogers is doing. He didn't take much with him, but it stands to reason he's used to making do. This far from any major urban area, the stars are probably brilliant. The silence must be nearly complete. I wonder what he takes from being quiet and alone in the relative wilderness of rural Ohio. 

Barton lands the eight ball for the game, and Banner good-naturedly acknowledges the win. Stark, sitting nearby, yells "Hey! Four-ball, or do you need to knock Clint back on a second game?"

"Nah, you brains have fun," Barton answers, rejoining Romanov at the table. Stark catches the cue when he tosses it, and Banner picks up only a few of the pool balls -- two red ones, a yellow one, and the cue ball. They shift back to a far table, one with no pockets. 

"You ever play carom billiards?" Stark asks me, chalking up. 

"Leave him alone," Banner warns, sounding amused. 

Stark says a word to him that I don't understand, and have to ask Banner how to spell, later: "Yotsudama?" 

"Challenger's choice," Banner answers. 

"Yotsudama is a Japanese variant on four-ball carom billiards," Stark explains, lining up his cue. "The object is to carom your cue ball off the two red balls without hitting the other cue ball. It's a nice bonus if you set it up so that your adversary has a hell of a time doing likewise. Physics and strategy," he says, taking the shot. He steps back, satisfied when he manages to hit both red balls without too much effort. "My favorite kind of game." 

"Yeah, tell us why you won't play with Natasha anymore," Banner teases. 

"I maintain she cheated."

"She didn't cheat. You can't cheat physics."

"If anyone could, it'd be Natasha," Stark says. "You know she speaks Latin? Nobody speaks Latin. It's a dead language."

"I can see how that might be appealing," Banner replies tolerantly. "The Pope speaks Latin. I mean, one assumes."

"Only professionally. Are you saying Natasha is prepared for randomly meeting the Pope?"

"Oh, I'm sure if she met the Pope, it would be intentional. And would probably..." Banner pauses to make his shot, "...not go well for His Reverence."

"Does she have something against Catholics?" I ask. They both glance at me.

"She has something against large, wealthy organizations which enjoy dictating moral laws they don't always appear, by their actions, to subscribe to," Banner says tactfully. "She's suspicious of religion in general, it's not limited to Catholicism. I don't think she has, you know, a prejudice against individual Catholic people."

"Steve's Catholic," Stark remarks. "She's fine with him."

"Steve's not Catholic," Banner says. 

"He was raised Catholic. He's still got a Christopher medal hung on his dog tags."

"Well, that's apt, I guess. How do you know?"

"I'm observant."

"Nosy."

"I can't combine the two hobbies? Anyway, just because he doesn't go to church, doesn't mean he's not Catholic." Stark catches me looking curious. "He's having some issues with the faith at the moment." 

"They're not too happy with him, either," Banner puts in. "Apparently he wrote a very inflammatory letter to some cardinal."

"Still, once Catholic, always Catholic."

"What about excommunication?"

"Believe me, if Steve Rogers gets excommunicated, we're all going to hear about it. Loudly and in detail. I'll bring popcorn."

Banner laughs. "When Steve isn't happy about something, he isn't quiet about it," he tells me. "Which is a nice change from his initial party line."

"What, the whole _we're soldiers, we have orders_ thing?" Stark asks. "Yeah, that lasted exactly as long as it took him to realize his COs now aren't any brighter than his COs were in the forties. Which was, in its own way, endearingly optimistic." 

"What about the two of you?" I ask. "You religious men?"

"Atheist," Stark says. "Long line of loud atheists on Dad's side. Mom was Protestant, though, so I can fumble my way through a hymn if for some reason the need arose."

"Agnostic," Banner adds. "Raised Catholic."

"Seriously?" Stark asks. "I didn't know that."

"Yep. Lapsed a _long_ time ago. I've studied Buddhism, some South American forms of animism, Sufi Islam, a little Hinduism. Nothing really stuck on the faith end. Lots of interesting philosophy." 

"Before or after Hulk?" I ask. Banner freezes for a moment, then misses a shot. 

"After. Before, I suppose you could say I was a Dystopic," he says.

"A what now?" Stark asks. He's standing close to the other man -- Stark has very few personal boundaries much of the time, and physical proximity seems to be the way he comforts people. Banner looks down and to the side, at where Stark's reactor would be if it were visible. 

"Sometimes, particularly in the hard sciences, people lose perspective," he says. "They don't question whether what they can do is what they should do. I'm against the restriction of scientific progress, but if what happened to me has taught me anything, it's that mindfulness needs to be a part of what we do. Before, if I thought about it at all, I justified what I did by believing that it would save lives, that the product of my work would be a net gain in the long run. If I had known then what I know now -- not just about Hulk but about philosophy, humanism I suppose -- I would have conducted my research with a greater consciousness of what I was potentially unleashing."

"But you can't always know what the result will be," I point out. 

"No, but you don't have to ignore your data, either. Steve is a product of a program designed to develop soldiers in the peak of human condition. Imagine how the war would have gone with entire platoons of men like him. It's not that difficult to predict. And then," he adds, before either of us can talk, "imagine what you'd do with a hundred thousand men like him once the war was done. Men who maybe didn't have the moral code he does. Men who were traumatized by war. And you can't put a genie like that back in the bottle. Imagine what would happen if the next war after the invention of the super-soldier was a genetic war." He exhales. "As a scientist, I got to step one. I never reached step two." 

Stark rests a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment they're both quiet. There's an obvious bond to be had between them -- when Tony Stark returned from three months of captivity, he closed down his weapons contracts and manufacturing plants, stating an explicit belief that what he was doing was morally wrong. 

Then Stark says, "I'm going to have to ask you to move your pretty but excruciatingly boring philosophical ass so I can take this shot, Dr. Talksalot," and hip-checks him out of the way. Banner goes with a grin. 

"I see why you two are friends," I say. 

"Hey, that reminds me, Hulk totally said I'm his favorite," Stark tells Banner.

"I could have told you that," Banner answers. 

 

Captain Rogers is back the next morning in time for breakfast in the little dining room of the hotel (I strongly suspect it is a B&B in disguise). He has grass stains on his jeans and a twig that Barton carefully plucks out of his hair. His face is covered in healing scrapes, and along with the steak breakfast our host brings him, he gets an ice pack for his swollen left wrist. 

"Did you wrestle a bear?" Stark asks, wrapped around the largest cup of coffee it was possible to procure. 

"No, but I did see one," he answers.

"You saw a bear?" Romanov asks. 

"Sure. Mama with her cub. This is from the poacher," he adds, gesturing at his face. 

"Poacher," Stark says flatly.

"Bear season's not till August. He was aiming for the cub. We had a little difference of opinion." 

Thor, who has been inhaling a giant omelette, bursts out laughing. Stark rubs his eyes.

"It's too early for...you," he says. "Am I going to have to call legal?"

"Not unless you think they can help prosecute," Rogers replies. "I dumped him at the ranger station on the way out this morning. He's fine." 

"We can't take you anywhere," Stark complains. 

"Sure seems like I find more than my fair share of trouble," Rogers answers, with a smile that says he may enjoy the fact. 

"Anything interesting happen? Other than rescuing a baby bear," Banner says. 

"Nope. Nice quiet walk in the woods." 

After breakfast, we pack up our belongings while Rogers uses a shower to clean himself up a little. By the time he joins us at the Quinjet, the scrapes on his cheek are faded to thin red lines, and his wrist seems fine. He takes the co-pilot seat instead of Romanov; apparently Barton is giving him some off-hours pilot training. 

Romanov sits next to me. Stark and Banner are across from us, consulting together on something on a StarkPad, and Thor leans on Barton's seat-back, casually chatting with Barton and Rogers.

"I can tell you about Sterns," Romanov says quietly, once we're airborne. "I would have sooner, but I needed to check with S.H.I.E.L.D. first."

"Does S.H.I.E.L.D. know what happened in Harlem?" I ask.

"We know what happened to Samuel Sterns," she says. "And we apparently know what Abomination means." 

"Was it a military operation?"

"No. Well -- as an object, yes. As a name, no."

"What does that mean?"

She turns, tucking one leg up to sit sideways on the seat, studying me. "Cap says he thinks you're trustworthy. Tony's jury is still out. Thor and Clint, I don't think they care -- Thor's got nothing to hide and Clint generally doesn't talk to anyone so he's used to not talking to journalists. Bruce has said from the start we should give you a fair shake."

"What do you think?"

"I think you could be useful to me." 

"How?"

"I think, if you wanted, you could tell a story that would redeem him. I think you could put all the pieces together and even Bruce would be surprised at what you'd come up with. But that involves you, whoever publishes your story, and the Avengers all picking a direct fight with the DoD, and I'm not sure it's worth it. Until now, it hasn't been. So," she says, "convince me."

"Tell me what you know, and I will," I answer. "I'll put together everything I can. You like what you see, I'll run it. You don't like it, I'll burn it." 

She considers the offer. It's unorthodox, but so is Natasha Romanov. 

"Fair," she decides. 

 

IN THE two weeks I spent with the Avengers, Dr. Banner never told me what happened to him to cause the existence of Hulk. I still don't know. That's his story to tell, as Stark said, and he didn't want to. Unlike Captain Rogers, knowing how Banner and Hulk came to be who they are is not necessary to understand how they interact with their team and the world around them. 

What I know from public sources is that the Army went after Hulk after his initial appearance. Hulk -- by extension, Banner -- was forced into hiding. There were skirmishes here and there, but never any detailed information. It seems likely that Banner spent the next few years traveling and trying to fix what happened, staying well under the military radar. Romanov confirms that during these years he even evaded S.H.I.E.L.D.'s advanced intelligence network. 

Romanov's story about what happened in Harlem is part speculation, but based in fact. Banner at some point consulted with Dr. Samuel Sterns about his condition, and even sent him a blood sample. He was eventually convinced to meet him in person to discuss possible medical treatment for his unique condition. Romanov suspects Sterns was developing either a treatment or a complete cure based on his work with what, in the records she's seen, is called the Banner Sample. 

Sterns, however, was not only working on a cure. The unique properties of Banner's blood suggested a lot of possible pharmacological uses. He was able to duplicate the specific composition of Banner's blood, and he began working with the military to develop its uses. 

The most significant of these uses was the creation of a new "Super Soldier" program, based on the original program of the 1940s, in which Steve Rogers took part. A soldier -- Romanov knows of his existence but not his name -- was injected with a modified serum created from Banner's blood. 

Banner does know his name, and offers it when questioned: Emil Blonsky. There are no public records of any kind associated with this name. Contacts of mine in various news organizations suggest he was a special operations soldier out of Europe somewhere, on loan to the US Army. This is unconfirmed. Nobody is talking. 

Hulk tangled with Blonsky once, a few days before the Harlem incident. At the time, he seemed to be much like Captain Rogers: a normal-looking man with enhanced reflexes and strength. Blonsky, so Banner believes, was badly injured in the fight. Hulk escaped, and Banner decided at that point it was time to consult Sterns in person, unaware of what Sterns had done with his blood sample. 

In his own words, Dr. Banner was "in and out" after that. He doesn't remember much past meeting Sterns. He did discover that Sterns had replicated his blood, but after that his memories are blurred, essentially useless. 

Military press releases have strongly implied that something set Hulk off, and he rampaged through Harlem, destroying buildings and endangering lives. Only four casualties, however, are listed: three US Army soldiers and Dr. Samuel Sterns. 

Romanov was in New York when the event took place. She and her handler at the time, Jasper Sitwell, witnessed different portions of the event. Wednesday afternoon, after we returned to New York, Romanov introduced me to Sitwell, a soft-spoken man clearly uncomfortable with the knowledge he was carrying. 

Romanov knows what Abomination is, because she saw it briefly. Sitwell tells me that there were two monsters in Harlem, Hulk and Abomination, and New York was caught in the crossfire.

Romanov's description of Abomination outlines a creature about the size of Hulk, but significantly different physically. Hulk is essentially a giant man, though in some ways perhaps proportionately closer to one of the great apes. Having seen him up close, his face is undeniably human. Abomination, Romanov says, was different: covered in spikes and scales, more like something out of Jurassic Park than a human being. She saw him only briefly before she was called away to help rescue refugees from the attack. 

Sitwell, who remained onsite after Romanov left, confirms her description. He also heard Abomination speaking in complete sentences. Most of them were either threats or taunts. 

This is the truth about what happened in Harlem that night, from eyewitnesses who were there. Abomination, recovering from his first fight with Hulk, was being restrained by the military and broke free. He ran to Harlem. He left a trail of mayhem in his wake to prevent them from following easily. Dr. Banner, meeting with Sterns nearby, was somehow informed of this development, and Hulk intervened. Abomination attacked him, and Hulk fought back in defense of the city. 

The collateral damage of two giant, superhuman beings slugging it out on the street was immense. Harlem was still rebuilding from it when the Chitauri came. At the end of their fight, Abomination was left in the street, unconscious or dead. Sitwell claims to have seen soldiers securing the body. 

Hulk escaped, disappearing off the Army's radar completely but arriving on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s, where Dr. Banner was declared a protective custody priority. Part of Romanov's job after Harlem was to track his movements and ensure both his safety and the safety of those around him, without being seen. I suspect she was very good at this. 

The public outcry over the savage attack on Harlem was immense. It's understandable, if not forgivable, that the military would place the blame on Hulk. It ensured that if he were seen he'd be reported, and it kept the heat off them for creating, and then losing control of, Abomination. Outside of the Army, very few knew what had really gone on. 

Until now, Jasper Sitwell has kept silent, informing only the appropriate intelligence analysts at S.H.I.E.L.D. of events. Before the Chitauri, S.H.I.E.L.D. was not a well-known agency and their standing within the defence community was not particularly stable. The only reason this information is coming to light now is that S.H.I.E.L.D. feels secure in its position relative to the military. And, I suspect, because Natasha Romanov has watched Bruce Banner suffer the belief that he destroyed Harlem on a whim for long enough. 

Abomination, Ross, Sterns. 

Abomination was the creature Hulk battled in Harlem. Ross, presumably General Thaddeus Ross, was the man in charge of both securing Hulk and creating Abomination. It's likely his fight with Stark was to do with his pursuit of Banner. The Avengers are defensive of Banner in the way friends are, but Stark's behavior is decidedly that of an older brother who doesn't mind knocking a few heads in. His humiliation of Ross had to have been satisfying. Ross has since left military service. 

So what about Dr. Samuel Sterns?

Romanov arrived in Harlem after the fight was finished. She infiltrated the cleanup crews that were sweeping away evidence of what had taken place. She was too late to gather any of that evidence herself, but she did discover Dr. Sterns, half-buried under a pile of debris. He had obviously come into contact with some of the Hulk serum; she describes a half-lucid man with a distended forehead reminiscent of Abomination's appearance. 

"Sterns was taken to S.H.I.E.L.D. medical," she tells me. "As far as I'm aware, he died later that night." 

 

I PROVIDE the previous passage to Romanov on Thursday morning. She disappears with it, while I follow Barton to a shooting range and watch him knock bullseye after bullseye into targets with rifles, handguns, knives, and arrows. We talk about sports, mainly. Hawkeye is an avid Cubs fan. One gets the feeling the Avengers like an underdog. 

When we return in the afternoon, Romanov is sitting with Dr. Banner in the common room, Stark on the other side, Rogers pacing by the windows. All of them look ready to commit murder, except Banner, who just looks weary. 

"Where's Thor?" Barton asks, clearly sensing the mood of the room. I'm not sure if the anger is directed at me or at the people who withheld this information. I do fear a little for Sitwell's life. 

"He went to get food," Stark says. He unfolds from the couch, and Barton immediately takes his place. 

Stark is not a large man, comparatively speaking. He's my height, and more wiry than muscular. But he puts himself directly in front of me, and I am genuinely worried he could take me down without much fight. He is a man accustomed to power and to wielding it. His fury is incandescent. In the moment, I am more afraid of him than I was of Hulk. 

"Sitwell didn't know Banner hadn't been told," he says. 

"I didn't ask," I answer.

"No, I'm telling you. I'm not angry at you and I'm not -- well, I'm a little angry at Sitwell," he says. Rogers has stopped pacing and is watching us warily. "But he didn't know. So this isn't on him. For the most part." 

"Mr. Stark, you're awfully close to me for not being angry with me," I reply. He visibly checks himself, leaning back. He does not smile and he does not apologize. 

"I want to know who gave the order to cover up Abomination," he says. "I want to know where Ross is. I want to know where Blonsky is, if he's alive. So if you know any of those things, you will tell me."

"Heads gonna roll in New York tonight," Romanov murmurs. 

"Fury knew," Rogers says. The others look at him. Banner's head is in his hands. "Fury must have known. And he would have known that Bruce didn't know."

"Wouldn't be the first time he lied to us," Stark replies.

When I ask about this later, nobody will tell me what it means. Nicholas Fury is the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Maria Hill's direct superior; she holds the leash of the Avengers and he commands her, but the Avengers make their own decisions. And clearly they know the kind of man they answer to. 

"Do you know where Emil Blonksy is?" Stark asks again.

"I can try to find out," I say. This is not good reporting, and I know this. I've become involved. Can't be helped now. 

"I can find Ross," Romanov volunteers.

"Good. I'm pretty sure if he didn't give the order, he knows who did," Stark says. 

"Tony," Bruce says quietly, lifting his head. Stark twists around to look at him. "Let it go."

"I'm sorry, I have a personal problem with someone who unleashed a monster on New York and then blamed the hero when his plan backfired," Stark says. "So you don't have to come along, Bruce, but I am going to hang someone by their thumbs before this is over and I think frankly you'd get a lot of catharsis out of that."

"No thumb-hanging," Banner replies. He looks almost amused. "This isn't Gulmira, Tony."

In 2008, a town named Gulmira in Afghanistan was hostage to the Ten Rings, the same militarized gang which had held Stark hostage earlier that year. In what was to become Iron Man's first public appearance, Tony Stark fell on Gulmira like the wrath of a particularly sarcastic god. It took twenty minutes, landing-to-liftoff, to secure Gulmira, destroy the Ten Rings' communications system and their two functioning tanks, and leave the disarmed, badly injured soldiers to the mercy of the townspeople they'd been terrorizing. 

Gulmira today is a prosperous, bustling community with a very well-armed police force and a Stark Industries plastics plant. They make brightly colored designer cases and housings for laptops and StarkPads. If you own a Stark computer, you can likely check out the casing and find a MADE WITH PRIDE IN GULMIRA stamp. The plant is unionized. Stark is a very thorough man. 

If Tony Stark decides to take down the US Army, or even a portion of it, there could literally be war between the Avengers and the government that oversees them. It's clear that Rogers, while the leader, will back Stark over everyone else except Banner himself. Thor will likely follow Rogers. Romanov wants revenge, and Barton may not be clear on the details yet but he'll follow Romanov. The Avengers have fought armies before and won. 

So in this moment, all that stands ahead of armed conflict is Dr. Bruce Banner, self-professed former Dystopian. 

"It's his call," Rogers says. 

"I want blood for this," Stark snarls. 

"What do you think you'll get?" Rogers asks, then holds up a hand when Stark opens his mouth. It is literally the only time I have ever seen someone shut Tony Stark up. "When the article gets published. When this all comes out in the papers. Come on, Tony, you know what'll happen."

And now everyone's looking at me. 

"Well, it won't be actual blood," I say. "But it's going to make the figurative knives come out on Capitol Hill." 

Romanov has had a hand on Banner the entire time -- hair, shoulders, back, arm, constantly touching him. Banner gently shrugs her off, now, and waves away Barton's hand as well. He has the flashdrive I gave to Romanov, with the story on it. 

"I think you should publish this," he says quietly, gently, and Stark shuffles out of the way so he can put it in my hand. "Hulk gets enough of the bloodshed. This is better."

Behind me, the elevator door opens. 

"I have food to sustain us," Thor announces. "When do we depart for battle?"

"No battle, Thor," Rogers says, helping him with the food. 

"But I thought -- "

"No battle," Banner repeats. He glances at me. "No offense, but I think we need to have a little meeting without you present."

I withdraw to my room. Barton passes me a bag of food on my way. 

It's certainly been an interesting first week with the Avengers.


	3. Chapter 3

ABOUT AN hour later, Barton knocks on my door. 

"I think it's safe to come out now," he says, looking somewhat apologetic. "Cap and Tony went down to the gym to beat the snot out of each other, it's their thing." 

"Is Dr. Banner all right?" I ask.

"Thor's keeping him company. He's pretty good at cheering people up. And, in the case of inadvertent Hulking, he's the most capable of putting him down," he adds cheerfully. 

"Is that likely?"

"Bruce seems okay to me. Usually these days it takes a punch to the face to make him change, unless he wants to," Barton answers, leading me down the hallway. "And we haven't actually tried the face-punching thing."

"Are you going to hunt down Ross?" I ask.

"Not difficult to find him, his address is in the phone book," he says. "But no. The situation with Ross is a little complicated. Bruce thinks this way is best. Tony doesn't agree, but he'll calm down. Cap's angrier than he's letting on, but he believes it's Bruce's call. Hence, fighting."

"What about Ms. Romanov? She seemed eager for revenge."

"Natasha takes the blame on herself for a lot of things that aren't her fault, and you can quote me on that," Barton answers. "She believes in correcting her mistakes. Bruce explained to her that this is not her mistake." 

"She believes him?"

"She accepts that attacking the entire US military establishment would be worse," he says. "Sometimes the choice is between a little mistake and a big mistake. Tasha's smart enough to choose the little mistake."

"And you?" I ask. He looks perplexed.

"Me what?"

"What do you think the Avengers should do?" 

"I'm just the bow and arrow guy," he says. 

"You must have opinions on the matter." 

He stops walking, and I realize we're in a room I haven't seen before, at the opposite end of the floor from the common areas. The view is, as ever, astounding, but the room itself is even more interesting: a solarium, filled with orchids and roses and small trees in decorative pots. There's a sculpture in the middle of the room, art-deco modernist, a man reaching upwards, his bottom half more architectural than anatomical. It's warm here, and comfortingly closed-in. It feels oddly secure. 

"I know a little about what it's like to lose control," Barton says. His hands drift along the orchids, brushing the leaves. "The world goes black, and when you wake up again you don't know what you've done. Worse, you do, and it's terrible. More than anyone on this team, I know what Bruce goes through. It only happened to me once, and once was enough to change my life. He does it time after time. He lets it out and hopes that when he comes to, he hasn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it. All that after thinking he once destroyed eight or nine city blocks for fun."

He glances at the sculpture, then out at Manhattan.

"The thing you want most when you've had control taken from you is to get it back," he says. Barton generally speaks with no accent, but his words are thicker now, more like the country boy he used to be. "So what I think -- what any of us thinks -- ain't material. In this particular case, what Bruce wants to do is all that matters."

"And if Bruce wanted you to attack the entire US military establishment?" I ask. 

"Well, I'm not that fond of treason," he says. "But if he wanted bloody payback, we'd find a way. Y'all can think that's fucked up if you want. This is the only family I have. I'm not losing it now." 

He knocks his knuckles against the base of the sculpture. "I modeled for this. Felt a little ridiculous at the time, but Steve asked. Tash calls it _Ode to A Funny Looking Guy_."

On closer examination, it's definitely Barton's face on the sculpture. It looks agonized, like the upward thrust of his body is a final, desperate attempt to reach something he knows he won't. I wonder if that's how he feels, or how Rogers feels. Possibly both. 

"What do you think of it?" I ask.

"I think Hulk's not the only one who's just glad someone finally gets him," Barton says. "Stay as long as you want. I'm going to go make sure nobody's killed anyone in the gym." 

 

THE SENSATION of having a ticking time bomb on my laptop in the form of a government expose is not a comfortable one, even for a journalist. On the other hand, in the company of the Avengers, I'm probably the safest person in Manhattan at the moment. As long as they don't murder each other. 

Dinner that night is Barton's turn again, and it's definitely comfort food: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, apple slices. Stark moves stiffly, but he has no visible bruises. Rogers has a repulsor-blast burn on his arm, but it's shallow and healing quickly. Romanov has bloody knuckles. All of them are quiet, with the sort of mindless fatigue that follows anger. It's not an awkward meal, but it is a mostly silent one. 

That night, Jarvis wakes me, turning on the bedside lamp and calling my name.

"What is it?" I ask, still half-asleep. "What _time_ is it?"

"One eighteen am," he says. 

"Why am I up? Is something happening?"

"I believe you may find the gymnasium of interest," he replies. 

The elevator to the gym lets out on a hallway, with locker rooms on one side and a workout room with machines and weights on the other. Down the hall is a big open space, taking up most of the floor. There's a lap path around the outside, and a basketball hoop at one end. At the moment, there are lights along the floor indicating a baseball diamond. 

I linger in the doorway, either unnoticed or unacknowledged at first. The Avengers are playing a makeshift sandlot game: they take turns at bat while the rest of them play defense. Captain America is pitching. Dr. Banner is standing off to one side, watching with crossed arms and a smile on his face. 

Rogers holds out his hand and a holographic ball materializes in it; with a long lean back and a sharp snap he pitches a curveball. Barton swings and misses. 

"Stop swinging at the curveballs," Banner advises. "Strike two." 

"Dick," Barton pronounces. 

"Take it up with the pitcher."

"HEY BATTA BATTA," Stark yells from first base. Barton steps away from the plate and theatrically points to a corner of the ceiling, Babe Ruth style. 

Romanov, in the "outfield", looks like she might be indulging the madness of those around her.

Barton manages to hit the next pitch, a fastball that wasn't fast enough, and he takes off for first. Romanov watches the ball sail ten feet over her head. There's a canned roar of applause. Barton runs the bases. 

"Wait, I got something for you," Stark yells. 

"What's that, loser?" Barton yells back.

"Tiniest baseball bat in the world," Stark responds, giving him the finger. Barton tucks his fingers under his chin and flicks them outward, a rude gesture more often seen in Tunisia than in New York. 

"How long have they been playing?" I ask Jarvis. 

"About an hour," Jarvis answers. "Captain Rogers has found baseball exceptionally effective in team bonding."

"I can see that," I agree, as Barton and Romanov switch places. Rogers winds up. Romanov bunts for a single on the first pitch. 

"Hey pitcher, you suck," Barton remarks. 

"So's your old man," Rogers answers, as Stark leaves first base to pick up the bat. 

I watch them work their way through the rotation a few times, Romanov stepping in to pitch when Rogers is at bat, before Stark notices me. 

"Hey, we get someone in the bleachers," he tells the others. 

"Well, come in then," Rogers says. "Might as well cheer from the dugout as the cheap seats."

They continue play, apparently happy to ignore me, until Romanov throws a pitch wide and the holographic ball passes straight through Barton's body. 

"I'd charge the mound if I didn't think you'd kick my ass," he says.

"Lost control of the pitch," she replies. "I don't like pretending to throw pretend balls."

"I'm not putting real baseballs in here, one of us will die," Stark says. 

"Come on, do some practice pitches," Rogers encourages, stepping back and tossing her one of the holographic balls. Stark settles on the bench where I'm sitting, and Barton wanders over to a rock-climbing wall along one edge of the gym, hoisting himself up. 

"A couple of hours ago you were all nearly at each others' throats," I say.

"Drama queen. We had a disagreement. It happens," Stark replies. "Besides, Cap made a rule. Nobody comes angry to baseball."

"That works for you guys?"

"It's hard to stay angry playing baseball. At least, about other stuff," he says, waving a hand. "You're too pissed off someone doubled off your error." 

"Rogers' idea, these night games?"

"Mine, actually," he says. "Cap doesn't sleep as much as the rest of us and I was up late, seemed like a good idea at the time to hit a few balls." He grins. "You want a pat piece for your article?"

"I'll take what I can get." 

"My parents had a place in Los Angeles when I was a kid," he says. "Spent most of my time in LA. But for some reason I got it into my head that I was a Giants fan. I got a head for numbers, and baseball is a great game if you like statistics."

"Giants any good when you were a kid?" 

"Yeah, they were all right. Anyway, all I wanted for my ninth birthday was to see the Giants play at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. I didn't expect to actually get it -- my dad's time wasn't usually his own. I knew he'd have a hard time clearing his schedule. But he actually wrangled a day free and asked if I wanted a ride in the plane. I thought he was just taking me up -- he had a Piper PA-24 Comanche, pretty little thing, and sometimes he let me ride in it with him. Then we landed in San Francisco and suddenly we're in a limo heading to Candlestick. We had Giants-side tickets behind the dugout. Beautiful day for a game. Best birthday I ever had. Lifelong fan of baseball, after that." 

"Giants win?"

"Beat the hell out of the Mets."

"Did you see many other games with your father?"

"That was the only one," he says. "One was enough, though."

"First taste is free?"

He grins. "Something like that. Anyway, baseball was always my game. When I was sixteen I used to ditch class at MIT and go see the Sox play. You should ask Cap about the Dodgers. Apparently he used to sneak into Ebbets Field to see games back in ye olden times." 

"Historically, the Dodgers and the Giants have something of a rivalry," I point out.

"You don't say," he says, as Rogers whistles sharply between his teeth.

"Resume play!" he announces, and Stark heads back to first base. 

 

Later on Friday -- much later, after the game breaks up (Barton claims he won; Jarvis can't give definitive score since there were no real rules) and everyone's gotten a few more hours of sleep -- Thor and Captain Rogers hatch a plan to spend the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This, I think, should be good. 

In ordinary clothes, the two could pass for brothers, albeit brothers with a mutual interest in extreme physical fitness. They draw stares on the street and in the subway; Thor preens, and Rogers either doesn't notice or doesn't care. 

Aesthetic admiration, however, seems to be the theme of the day. I follow them from gallery to gallery and notice more about the people watching them than about the art on the walls. A woman tries to make conversation with Thor over a Matisse, but seems a little intimidated when he describes the battle scenes he prefers. 

In the sculpture garden, Rogers sits on a bench, sketching; a young man with pink hair sits down next to him.

"Are you an artist?" he asks, leaning in to see what Rogers is drawing.

"Hobbyist," Rogers replies, with a friendly smile. 

"You're really good."

"Thank you." Rogers takes him in -- an ironic vintage t-shirt, pink hair, piercings. "Art student?" he guesses.

"Only during the school year," the man replies. "I'm Rick," he adds, offering his hand.

"Steve," Rogers answers, shaking it. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Ask away."

"How did you get your hair so pink?"

Rick laughs. "Bleached it, then chalked it."

Rogers peers at it. "Well, it's very...vibrant," he says. 

"Thank you. Hey, you want to blow the museum, get a beer somewhere?"

"No, my friends are here," Rogers says.

"Blow them off."

"I like the museum." 

"I like you."

Rogers looks a little tired, but he's clearly trying not to let it show. "Thank you, but I'm not interested," he says politely. 

"Your loss," Rick informs him, and walks away. I settle in his place.

"You get that a lot?" I ask.

"Sometimes. Maybe more often than I think -- I'm not good at recognizing it. I didn't get him just now until he told me to...uh, leave you and Thor behind. People weren't so forward, where I come from. And before the war that didn't usually happen to me." 

"What, with men?"

"With anyone," he says, his mouth quirking. "Especially men."

"You handle it well."

"Natasha taught me how to be blunt about it. After about the tenth time she rescued me from someone."

"I meant the part where men make passes at you."

"Oh! Well, it's no different, really."

"It is where you come from."

"And I am grateful for the progress that's been made," he says, shading the line of a sculpture's protruding arm. "I never saw any reason you ought to be offended at someone for something like that. No skin off my nose who people step out with."

"Do you ever step out with any of them?" I ask. He looks like he's amused I used his slang. 

"No. The attention is flattering, of course, but...well, life's a little complicated for all that right now." 

"How so?"

"Got bigger things to think about, is all." 

Thor arrives then, announcing his desire for snacks, and we decamp for the roof garden, sandwiches, and beer. 

"Everyone in New York is so friendly," Thor says, as Rogers tips his face back to enjoy the mid-afternoon sunlight. "I am never in a public place but someone strikes up a conversation. Midgardians are delightful."

"You've made a lot of friends in New York?" I ask.

"Indeed. Just now I spoke with a woman who was explaining to me the nature of the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. I admit I was disappointed," he says. 

"By what?" Rogers asks, leaning forward again. "I saw her work back when I was a kid. I liked it."

"Well, I had thought her paintings of skulls were of animals she had killed in battle," Thor complains. "I thought she was some form of warrior. It turns out they are symbols. A shame, I thought. They would have made such magnificent bragging."

Rogers is clearly trying not to smile. "I'm sorry," he says. "If I knew you thought that I would have explained it to you sooner."

"And do you know about the flowers?" Thor asks, in a low voice. 

"What about them?" Rogers asks back, clearly perplexed. 

"They say they are truly paintings of a woman's parts," Thor says. 

At times, when faced with something bewilderingly modern or particularly complicated, you can see Rogers turning the information over in his head until it makes sense. Usually it's only a second or two, but for this, it takes him more than a few beats to understand. 

"No," he says when the penny drops. He sounds scandalized. And a little gleeful. 

"So they say!" Thor insists. 

After we eat, we spend a long time in front of the Met's collection of O'Keeffe paintings. 

"How was the museum?" Dr. Banner asks us, when we troop in for dinner. 

"I think everyone learned something today," Rogers replies. In the background, I can hear Thor sadly explaining his misreading of Georgia O'Keeffe while Stark -- well-known as a modern art lover and collector -- falls into a fit of laughter. 

 

MY SECOND Saturday with the Avengers finds everyone in front of the massive television again for cartoons. This time, Stark is present, along with Virginia Potts; she and Romanov sit together and talk quietly, while Stark takes apart some device he's working on and spreads the parts on the coffee table. Rogers is watching a Pinky And The Brain segment from Animaniacs with evident fascination. Thor is absent; Rogers said he's off having brunch with Dr. Foster. Behind his back, Barton made vaguely sexual gestures. 

Dr. Banner enters with a bowl of oatmeal, and Ms. Potts calls, "Bruce! I'm glad you're up, Tony is building a better mousetrap. There may be tears."

"Hey, Pepper," Banner responds. She gestures him over and he bends to greet her with a kiss on the cheek before turning to join everyone else. As he turns away, he mouths _I'm her favorite_ at Stark, who points at Banner's eyes with a screwdriver and makes an affectionate stabbing motion. 

There's a sudden break in the cartoon, and every head turns towards the television. Jarvis comes over the loudspeakers.

"Pardon the interruption, but I believe this should be brought to your attention," he announces, as MSNBC appears on the screen. 

This is the day the Queens Sniper opens fire. 

By the time this goes to press, the Queens Sniper will have been studied and pronounced upon and analyzed. As I write this, less than a week after the event took place, it's already beginning to happen. 

Banner sets his oatmeal aside. Stark looks up from whatever he's working on. Rogers, about to protest the removal of the cartoons, closes his mouth and leans forward. Barton and Romanov take out their phones. So does Potts. 

"What part of Queens?" Potts is asking someone on the phone. "Well, do we have staff from that area? Yeah -- no, I want -- yes, I want you to call every staff member in the area and make sure they're safe."

"...speak to the coordinator for the special team," Barton is saying. "This is Clint Barton attached to S.H.I.E.L.D. and I'm a qualified sniper. Let me give you my badge number..."

"I need to know if the Avengers should be on standby," Romanov says. "If Maria Hill didn't know about this the minute it happened, someone should tell her. Yes, this line or the direct line to the Tower."

On the television, the news ticker is scrolling -- there's a sniper at a shopping center in Queens, taking aim at people on the street. 

"Okay. Yeah okay, I'm on my way now," Barton says, hanging up the phone. "Steve! Bike!"

"Keys," Rogers calls back, already throwing Barton a set of motorcycle keys. 

"What's going on?" Potts asks, as Barton pulls his boots on. Banner is hurrying down the hall, presumably to retrieve Barton's bow. 

"SWAT says they can use me at the scene," Barton replies. "Cops have no idea where this guy is, apparently he can't be making the shots he is without changing location. I can help spot him. And shoot him, if need be," he adds, shouldering the case Banner brings him. He glances at the television, where there are reports of two children having been shot. "Gonna put a shaft right through his nuts," he pronounces, and disappears into the elevator. 

"NYPD says they don't think we're the team for this, but S.H.I.E.L.D. wants us on standby anyway," Romanov says, pocketing her phone. "Hill's on her way to the scene. If we're needed, she'll call."

"Should we be onsite?" Rogers asks.

"Not in my opinion," she says. "Clint's on his way there now?"

"He took my bike."

"Him, they may need. This isn't a brute-force situation," she says. 

"Standby it is," Rogers says. "Everyone uniform up. Stark, get the armor hot."

"It's always hot," Stark says, but he's heading for his room to change into his flight suit. Soon it's me and Potts, sitting alone, watching news coverage of a sniper in Queens. 

"We have fifteen employees with Queens addresses," she says after a minute. "If I knew being CEO meant I suddenly had fifty thousand families I cared about on three continents, I might have said no."

"Can't be much more trouble than one Tony Stark," I offer.

"Some days, much less. Still..." she is watching the news ticker. "I'm pretty sure as CEO I'm supposed to be evil and heartless." 

"Stark Industries seems to work fine without the evil."

She's about to reply when my phone starts lighting up with text messages. 

_Are u ok?_  
 _Turn on your tv and tell me you're fine._  
 _Did you see the news?_  
 _Please tell me you're still on the Avengers job._

In the New York area, text messages usage spikes eight hundred percent in the next half hour. In orbit, Stark satellites metaphorically groan under the strain, but keep transmitting. Next to me, Iron Man armor case by his leg, the man who designed the satellites and the woman who got them in the air sit curled together, watching the news. Rogers, in full uniform with his cowl pulled back like a hoodie behind his neck, fidgets restlessly, nervously. Romanov is on the phone more often than not. Thor is sheltering in place. Dr. Foster's apartment is in Queens, something nobody knew until he excitedly telephoned Stark. 

Banner looks at the news, looks at Rogers, and says, "They are never going to need Hulk for this."

"No," Rogers agrees. "Keep your phone on, though."

"I'll be in the lab. Come get me if the situation changes." 

"He tries to keep his stress level low," Romanov tells me. 

The Queens Sniper dominates the news throughout the day. There's plenty to report on. The Sniper is very active, and while the area around him has mostly been cleared, he's not above taking shots at cops. The Avengers literally can't stop watching -- it's their only source of information about a situation they may be called into, even if the chances aren't high. 

Romanov runs over to us at one point in the afternoon. "Watch," she says.

"What? We are watching," Stark answers.

"Clint just called. He had to cut short, something's about to happen," she says, and as she speaks there's another loud crack of gunfire. 

Hard on the heels of the sound, there's movement in the image bouncing back to us from a helicopter camera. A group of four or five SWAT members break right across the plaza. One of them suddenly darts left, disappearing into a building. There's a terrible moment when the cameras, but not the officers, can see a figure emerge onto the roof. Then there's a second man right behind him, the SWAT officer who went left instead of right with the others. 

"That's Clint," Romanov says, as the SWAT officer runs the man almost to the edge of the roof. 

"Are you sure?" Stark asks, squinting. 

"Oh yeah. No backup, last-minute plan? That's him," she says, and the SWAT officer, Maybe-Clint, leaps forward, grabbing his prey and wrestling him to the ground. 

"Yeah, that's Clint," Rogers says. "I'd recognize that fool hyperextending his shoulder anywhere."

 

BARTON RETURNS to us an hour later with a splinted left shoulder, some gravel-burn from his wrestling match, and a huge grin. 

"Tell me it's true," he says, hugging Romanov one-armed. "Back-chat on the radio coming back says no casualties."

"One's still in critical," she says, and I realize rather than celebrating a victory for him, they're celebrating the fact that the sniper didn't manage to kill anyone. 

"No dead kids?"

"No dead kids," Potts says, giving him a hug once Romanov is done. "Did they feed you?"

"I'm starving," Barton announces.

"I warned you about that shoulder," Rogers bellows from the kitchen. "I said it five or ten times at least, stop reaching so far with your left arm."

"I was chasing a murdering sniper monster," Barton says, throwing him his keys. "It's just a twist, I'll be back on form in like, ten minutes." 

"Muscles don't work the way you think they work," Rogers insists, even as he's passing Barton a giant bowl of leftovers from the previous night's dinner. "Your right arm is more limber, you've got greater reach, stop trying to reach equally. Just go for it right-handed."

"I use my right hand for a lot! I try not to risk it unnecessarily!"

"Well, if you do lose your arm I'm sure I'll be very sorry and Tony will build you a new one, how's that?" Rogers snipes.

"My god, you are such a babushka," Romanov says. "You are the biggest little old lady I have ever met." 

"Can we talk about how I owned that untalented hack of a sniper?" Barton asks. "I hear they actually got me on camera dropping him."

"Yes, which is how I know you hyperextended," Rogers says. 

"Babushka," Romanov repeats. 

"Front and center," Rogers orders, and Barton stands to attention in front of him, looking a little defiant. He's starting to be genuinely annoyed. 

Rogers rests a hand on his uninjured shoulder and looks at him solemnly.

"Good job," he says. "You got him. Well done, Clint."

The annoyance bleeds away. Barton looks like the praise means more to him than he wants to show. 

"Yeah, well. Punks get what's coming to them," he replies. 

 

I ASK Barton if he'd like to discuss what happened in Queens, but he says he can't do an interview until he knows what the party line is. As unorthodox as all of the Avengers are, Barton and Romanov have worked for various governments almost their entire lives, and they have a very strict code. 

"Tell you what, though," he says. "I'll talk about the circus if you want."

I genuinely hadn't expected him to volunteer this information; in the earlier interview, with him and Romanov together, he was tight-lipped about it. I don't know why he wants to discuss it now. 

"Tomorrow's Sunday," he says. "Looks like it'll be warm out. We can hang out in Central Park."

I'm not going to argue with a man handing me an exclusive on a silver platter. I agree to meet him at Victorian Gardens at ten; apparently he has morning appointments to keep. 

Victorian Gardens is a small amusement park within Central Park, with rides aimed mainly at very young children. There is, it must be said, a certain atmosphere of the circus about it. On a crisp, not-quite-warm summer morning, it bustles with families, air filling with the delighted shrieks of toddlers.

Barton arrives a little after I do, carrying coffees -- black for him, cream with no sugar for me.

"I notice things," he says, when I look surprised. "It's kind of in the job description."

We watch the kiddie rides from a distance, and I wait for him to speak. Barton doesn't take well to being questioned.

"I appreciate us doing this outside the Tower," he says, finally. "It gets a little enclosed sometimes. And Cap makes this face when I mention it..." he screws up his own face into a look of half-despair, half-sympathy. "Anyway."

"He doesn't like you talking about it?"

"I think he doesn't like being reminded that all of us are a little broken," Barton answers. "I mean, it's not like that's a secret. Won't be by the time you're done with us, anyhow."

He sips his coffee thoughtfully.

"The thing about it is, if I talk about this wrong, there'll be people on the hook for it," he continues. "Those folks talking about me in the press, the carnie folks -- Natasha gets mad about it, but they're just trying to make their way. I think they're sorta proud. Or they think I'm puttin' on airs," he adds, smiling. "Either way, they don't deserve any trouble for what they did, which was basically putting food in my stomach and clothes on my back for a while there."

"How old were you when you started performing?" I ask.

He picks a boy out of the crowd of kids playing in the amusement park. The boy is one of the older children, perhaps ten.

"About his age," he says.

 

CLINT BARTON'S first stage name was _The Astounding Hawk-Boy!_

"I had this costume covered in feathers, I thought I was hot shit," he recalls, looking somewhat fond.

Barton and his brother, Barney, were eleven and thirteen respectively when they ran away to join the circus. They were living in a group home at the time, and when a traveling show came through town, Barney saw his opportunity. He presented them both to the manager of the circus. The manager laughed at them and told them to run along home.

"We ain't got one," Clint piped up. 

For whatever reason, the manager felt this was an appropriate defense, and took them in. 

They started out as tiny roustabouts, working in the animal pens for a spot on the floor in one of the circus cars and as much mess-tent cooking as they could eat. After six months, Barney was still shoveling lion crap but Clint was performing in the show.

"I wanted to be a strongman. I had my name all picked out," he says, spreading his hands theatrically. "Goliath! But then I saw a knife-thrower, and he had a cape and a pretty assistant -- and I decided no, I'll be a knife-thrower."

The knife-thrower took Clint under his wing, teaching him the tools he still uses today: knives, arrows, and one tired old gun for outdoor shows, all fired with deadly accuracy. Clint, who had a natural talent his brother lacked, was a perfect shot by the time he was thirteen.

"You learn useful stuff in the circus," he says. "Stage makeup, sewing, knot-tying. Horsemanship. Pick-pocketing and scam-artisting. Lots of theater arts. Good balance, good sense of space. I did this act where we rigged me up to a safety harness and swung me all the hell over the tent while I shot arrows at apples the clowns threw around."

The Astounding Hawk-boy's reward for a good show? He was allowed to eat the apples.

By the time he hit sixteen, two things had happened: Barney Barton had run off from the circus, leaving his brother behind, and the Hawk-Boy name was wearing a little thin. Clint Barton was rechristened Hawkeye, The World's Greatest Marksman, and performed in a magnificent purple costume for the next two years. 

"I'm grateful for what I learned," Barton tells me. "But I wasn't a fool. They made enough money on me to make it worth their time, and I was still sweeping out the elephant pit after every show too. Day I turned eighteen, I hitched a ride to the nearest recruiting office."

It was an army office, so Clint Barton joined the army. Naturally, he became a sniper. He would carry the name Hawkeye with him throughout his military career and into his work for S.H.I.E.L.D. even before the Avengers. He's clearly proud of it.

"But you were eleven," I say. "That must have been a hard adolescence."

"Well, everyone's got it rough during puberty," he replies, brushing this aside.

He tells me a few more stories from the circus -- some unprintable, others redacted for reasons of privacy, one notable story suppressed in fear of legal action for vandalism. Once the door is open, Barton seems to have no hesitation in talking about his work with the circus, which he clearly feels was an influential time in his life. He is a funny, observant man, and he has a great affection for the people he now works with. 

When the topic comes up, I say, "You and Captain Rogers get along well."

"Yeah, most of the time."

"His approval seems to be important to you."

He looks surprised, but finally smiles. "Well, I guess when you're rooming with the walking symbol of America -- who was a member of what they actually call the Greatest Generation -- you figure his good word means something special. It's rare for us to find people we can put our faith in."

Certainly Barton seems to accept Rogers as a surrogate brother, which is probably for the best. Barney Barton, who left his brother and the circus to strike out for himself, is currently serving five to fifteen for armed assault in a California prison.

"Do you speak with your brother?" I ask.

"He made his choice," Barton replies. He glances at me. "He's my kin. He shows up on my doorstep tomorrow needin' help, he gets all the cash I got on me and a hot meal. But I'm not fixed to be particularly friendly with him. We earned the places we got today, him and me."

 

KIN IS a difficult subject among the Avengers. Of the six members of the team, only one has parents still living, and they're in another dimension.

Anthony Stark's parents died in an infamously mysterious car crash when he was seventeen, leaving him in the guardianship of Howard Stark's business partner, Obadiah Stane, who died several years ago in a small-aircraft accident. Stark is notoriously silent regarding his parents' deaths.

"Read the papers," he says, when I ask him. "It's all in there. I'll send you my favorite conspiracy website about the crash."

Steve Rogers lost his father when he was young to late-onset complications from mustard gas. His father was an infantryman during the first world war, in the same outfit Rogers would later serve in, the hundred and seventh. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was fifteen. He is candid about their deaths, but his tone suggests it's well-rehearsed candor.

"She couldn't shake it," he says. "Working conditions weren't what they are now and she was in a tuberculosis ward. There weren't many jobs going for women back then, especially Irish. She did what she had to do. I never went hungry or cold."

Romanov says only, "I didn't know my parents. I had good teachers, though."

She catches me before I can ask Dr. Banner.

"Let's not tempt fate," she says.

Bruce Banner and Clint Barton are both absent from official records in a way that makes me suspicious. But I do find information about Banner's mother's death which makes me think parents are a sore spot. Barton's parents died in a car wreck when he was nine, explaining how he and his brother ended up in a group home.

There are few siblings -- Barney Barton and Loki, not perhaps the ones they'd choose -- and very little close family. Rogers has a cousin or second-cousin somewhere, but he thinks looking them up would only be awkward. His point is well made.

With each other, however, they seem to have formed a tightly-knit bond. This Sunday afternoon, Rogers has taken the newspaper to pieces all over the living room, lying on the floor and reading the sports page while Banner does the Sudoku and Stark (half-buried under the funny pages) complains about people who can't use newsblogs. Romanov drinks strong black tea and reads the latest James Patterson novel. Barton reads over her shoulder, tutting when she turns the page before he's done. Thor, safely returned from Queens, has the Sunday restaurant reviews.

"We must go here," he tells Stark, pointing to one of the reviews.

"No we mustn't," Stark replies, reburying himself in the comics after peering at the review.

"Bad food?" Thor asks.

"Portions are too small," Stark says.

"Ah," Thor nods.

"Find a good barbecue place," Romanov suggests. Barton points out a passage in the book. "Yes, I see."

"Hey, Steve," Barton says.

"Mm?" Rogers asks, rolling onto his back so he can look at Barton as they talk.

"Is it true that Hydra was trying to strike a deal with Japan? This book says it is."

"I wouldn't know. I just blew up Schmidt's tanks, I didn't go to his dinner parties," Rogers says.

"If I may interrupt, Captain," Jarvis says. "There is no record of any treaty being suggested or made between Hydra and Japanese military or political leaders. The information is anecdotal to a memoir written twenty years postwar by a decidedly unreliable source."

Rogers drums his fingers on his chest, a habit he seems to have picked up from Stark.

"Was it Gilmore?" he asks.

"Indeed, sir," Jarvis replies.

"Gilmore, you troll," Rogers sighs, rolling over again. "Thanks, Jarvis."

"Who is Gilmore?" I ask. Romanov passed me the crossword, so I took it, but I haven't made much headway.

"Gilmore was in the hundred and seventh, where my team was attached during the war," Rogers answers. "He did this book about us, which was...not better for his having wanted a spot on the team when he never had a chance."

"Why didn't he?"

"Because he was a penny-ante bully who liked harassing women," Rogers replies calmly. "He's dead now so I don't imagine it'll cause any harm if you quote me on that." 

"Steve doesn't like bullies," Stark says.

"Sure don't," Rogers replies.

Romanov places her book in Barton's hands and stands, ruffling Rogers' hair as she passes. He has been stealthily folding a paper airplane out of the baseball scores, and he launches it at Banner, who catches it without looking and drops it on Thor's head.

"Tell us more stories about the good ol' days, Pa Steve," Stark teases.

"Tell the one about how you and Howard Stark accidentally blew up a bunker," Romanov suggests, returning with fresh tea.

"First, I told you, it wasn't our bunker," Rogers says. "It was an enemy bunker and we were going to blow it up _anyway_ , and it was empty. It's not my fault Howard hadn't field-tested the new explosives yet."

"I can tell you what he'd say," Stark replies. "That was the field test."

"Boy, did I get tanned for that one," Rogers adds nostalgically. "Phillips skinned me for even taking him out in the field in the first place."

"Eternally grateful you didn't get him killed," Stark drawls.

"My crowning achievement," Rogers drawls back. 

The second night game happens that night, around two in the morning. Jarvis wakes me again, and this time early enough that the game hasn't begun when I arrive. Stark looks like he's been up for hours -- when I went to bed he was in his workshop, so that's probably the case. Rogers has spectacular bed-head, but he looks a little hollow-eyed too. 

It's difficult to say whether the Avengers gather because they're insomniacs or because sometimes one of them needs a distraction from their dreams. Perhaps a little of both. When the game ends just before five, Rogers looks happier. Stark dozes off in the elevator. 

 

MONDAY MORNING, with only two days left on assignment, I'm summoned down from the Avengers floors to the executive floor of Stark Tower. An efficient-looking young man ushers me into the office of Virginia Potts, which is a very large office with a very large desk. It's designed to be intimidating, and it succeeds. 

"I find myself with half an hour unexpectedly free," she says. I suspect this is a lie; this moment has probably been planned since the Avengers knew there would be a story on them. "I thought I might be able to fill in any informational gaps you've come across."

It's likely she wants to make sure I'm not seeing or showing the Avengers in a negative light. It makes sense; Stark Industries is closely linked to the Avengers, and not only because Tony Stark is on the team. The Avengers live in a tower built by Stark. Their technology, their armor, and their weapons often come from Stark's own hands. Stark Industries has contracts with S.H.I.E.L.D. Bad publicity for the Avengers is bad publicity for everyone.

I'm more interested in getting half an hour with Ms. Potts herself. Interviews with her have been few and far between since she became CEO of Stark Industries, and before that were nearly nonexistent. There was a profile in Time, ten years ago, but it was barely five hundred words of puff PR attached to a much longer piece on Stark. 

She tilts her head, clearly amused when I tell her this. "Well, you can ask," she says, leaning back in her chair. "I may not answer."

Virginia Potts has worked for Stark Industries her entire adult life. She began as a project manager within Research & Development, where her skills caught the eye of Tony Stark during a factory inspection. He arranged for her transfer to his executive office on the spot. For a few years she was one of a dozen assistants and managers at the highest level of Stark Industries corporate, while she took night classes towards an MBA. She earned her degree around the same time Stark promoted her to his personal executive assistant. 

"I realized pretty quickly a degree in management wasn't going to cut it," she says. "I needed an MBA. Of course there's a lot you can only learn hands-on, but Tony's always been good about advancing staff who show promise." 

When Potts ascended the throne of Stark Industries after several years as Stark's assistant, it was commonly speculated that she had slept her way to the top. Potts, ignoring her detractors, led SI into its most profitable years since its founding and revolutionized the way the technology sector does business. In a world dominated by guru-creators who are both the lead designers and the business leaders -- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Tony Stark -- Potts has developed a no-nonsense, no-prisoners, no-coding-required policy which has established her place at the head of the digital pack. People buy Stark because it has style, but they keep coming back to Stark because it does the one thing everyone wants in a computer, a phone, or a server: it _functions_. Flawlessly, seamlessly, efficiently, intuitively.

"I'm the test case. If I can't make it do exactly what I want, it doesn't go to the public," she says. "Sometimes it drives Tony nuts, but it hasn't failed us as a policy." 

Stark, though he leaves the running of SI to Potts and the day-to-day coding to their staff, is still the lead developer on at least half of SI's commercial products. 

"It causes some friction," she admits, when I ask about this. "But honestly...less now than when I was his assistant. Now he has to listen to me. If he doesn't, I can make whatever he won't deal with someone else's problem. And there's nothing Tony hates as much as when I take his problems away from him." 

Is it difficult, leading a multinational corporation while dating a superhero?

"Well, I always know where he is," she jokes. "Of course I worry. Every time he goes out in the armor, I worry. But he has five other people at his back. Things are better than they were. We both have purpose in a way we didn't before." 

And the Avengers themselves?

"They're sweethearts. They look after each other. Half the time, now, when Tony leaves the workshop before nine it's because one of them went and dug him out. It's in everyone's interest to make sure the others are fit to fight. And they're not hard on the eyes," she adds. A chime rings softly, and she straightens in her chair. "That's time, I'm afraid."

"One final question?" I plead. She gestures for me to fire. "The employee families in Queens, the fifteen families you were concerned about. All of them all right?"

"That's your last question?"

"People will want to know."

She acknowledges this with a nod. "They're all fine. Thank you for asking." 

I thank her for her time, and I'm shown out into the lobby. There's a row of portrait photographs along one wall, the CEOs of Stark Industries past and present. Howard Stark; Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane; Stane alone; Stane with Anthony Stark (who looks excruciatingly young); Anthony Stark alone; Pepper Potts. 

I wonder what Howard Stark would think. 

"He'd have been horrified," Rogers tells me later. Aside from Tony Stark, he's the only one in this building who knew Howard Stark in any significant sense. "He was a progressive man. Her being a woman wouldn't have been a problem. But he was also possessive. Giving up SI to someone else? Someone who wasn't a Stark? He'd have called Tony every name under the sun. At the very least he'd have insisted he marry her to give her that Stark name. But," he adds, before I can speak, "I think -- I didn't know him as an older man -- I think once he saw what Pepper's done, he'd have thrown his weight behind her and never mentioned it again. He wouldn't apologize. He's like Tony. When he's wrong, he doesn't say he's sorry. He just corrects." 

 

MONDAY AND Tuesday are quiet. The Avengers go about their business: fight practice, meetings, art class for Rogers, physiotherapy for Barton. Romanov does intelligence analysis for S.H.I.E.L.D. Stark has work to attend to for SI, and Banner -- who is officially on the Stark Industries payroll -- has labs to manage. 

What Hulk told us hasn't been mentioned since the fight over whether to exact revenge for it. Likewise, though the Queens Sniper is still all over the news, it isn't discussed in Stark Tower. In the former case, I think it's probably being kept quiet, discussed in twos and threes without me present. Stark can't possibly have let go so easily. In the latter, it seems like it's done with: a mission was executed and resolved. Barton's splint is already off. 

Tuesday afternoon, a tempest brews up; I'm coming back from a meeting with my editor when I hear shouting even from the elevator. I emerge into an argument being carried on between six people in three rooms. 

" -- can't just go online and antagonize the internet!" Stark is yelling from the kitchen. "This will go poorly for you, Steve!"

"I'm not talking about saying I'm Captain America!" Rogers replies from the little computer nook off the main room. At the same time, Barton yells "Oh, for the love of God, just let him do it," from the living room. 

"We all have to learn sometime," Romanov adds. 

"Yes, and he is learning now, I am teaching him, you cannot try to fix the internet. People are stupid, and this is their bullhorn. What are you going to do, shut down the entire web?" Stark demands.

"Don't be ridiculous," Rogers cuts him off. "People have the right to say whatever idiocy comes into their heads. But I have the right to defend myself!"

"All you're going to do is piss people off, you know that, right?" Romanov asks. 

"It sounds like we're on your side but really we just think you're going to learn better from getting spanked by assholes than you will from Tony," Barton adds. 

Dr. Banner is leaning against the wall, watching.

"Dare I ask?" I say to him.

"Someone is wrong on the internet," Banner replies. "Steve's threatening to undertake to correct them." 

"Surely this has happened before," I say. He smiles dryly.

"Steve just worked out he can Google himself."

"Oh dear."

"I do not understand this," Thor says, emerging from the kitchen. "You know there are fools in this world as in any other. You were born to a higher cause. Why quibble with those who can only dream of what you achieve?" 

"What exactly happened?" I ask. 

"These people," Rogers says, and then throws up his hands. "Someone else explain it."

"Steve found a forum of neckbeards and child-fanciers who started a thread called Captain America Revenge Fantasy," Stark says. "The question is, if you suddenly got the Super Soldier Serum and were some seriously hot shit, who would you go find from before you were ripped so you could beat them up?"

I can think of a few people I'd consider.

"It misses the point completely," Rogers complains. "I never beat anyone up. Or -- or -- they keep mentioning women who wouldn't go out with them..."

"It's objectively horrible, but unlikely to resolve with a stern talking-to," Romanov puts in. 

"I'm going to put that app on your computer that turns all the comments on anything into pictures of kittens," Stark announces. "Jarvis, make a note."

"Noted, sir," Jarvis replies, without inflection. 

"The whole point of -- of _me_ \-- the whole point was that you should know how wrong it is to use power against the powerless," Rogers says. He seems genuinely distressed, honestly anxious over this. "This kind of power comes with a responsibility to use it wisely. These people think the only thing a little muscle's good for is beating on people who used to beat on you."

"Tell me you didn't consider it," Barton says. "Tell me you didn't want to, just a little."

"Of course I didn't. I'm an adult," Rogers says. Steve Rogers is the youngest of any of the Avengers by several years, not counting time spent unconscious. "It would have been unproductive at best. Sadistic, if you ask me." 

"A life well-lived is the best revenge?" Dr. Banner suggests. 

"See? Bruce agrees with me."

"I really don't, but I know better than to try and stop you." 

"I just think someone ought to pipe up and tell them they're being wrong-footed hooligans about this."

"That's the closest he gets to swearing," Barton tells me. 

"Will they cease in their beliefs because you tell them to?" Thor asks, sounding genuinely curious. 

"Well, they certainly won't stop if I don't say anything," Rogers replies. He looks determined. "I'm doing it."

"Don't do it!" Stark yells.

"I'm doing it!" Rogers yells back. 

 

CAPTAIN ROGERS is very quiet at dinner. 

"You're not talking much tonight," Ms. Potts says to him, having joined us for Romanov's stew and dumplings. "Tony mentioned your scrap with a message board."

Rogers sets down his fork and looks dismal. "They are really terrible people," he says. "They're like piranhas."

"I warned you," Stark says. 

"At least now you know not to do it again," Barton adds consolingly. 

"Oh, no, I'm going to keep my eye on those sons of -- " Rogers breaks off. "Well. They might be terrible people but nothing gets fixed if you don't stand up to them."

Stark puts his head in his hands. Banner, with a positively evil look, says, "Maybe you should get a blog, Steve." 

 

ALL OF which brings us back to where we began: an Avengers night game bleeding over from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning. Stark and Banner are bickering about whether Thor has the right to fly when he's trying to tag someone out. Thor himself is at batting practice with his hammer. Nearby, Romanov has pinned Barton in their wrestling match and is demanding he declare her superiority in Russian. Captain Rogers is in an effortless handstand, balanced on his right hand. He swaps out to his left, then back to his right. 

A soldier, a sniper, a spy; an engineer, a scientist with a giant inside him, and an alien with a mean swing. 

When the Battle of Manhattan comes up, or when any action involving them is mentioned, the Avengers are quick to give credit to police and emergency services. They speak glowingly of the people who risked their lives to get everyone to safety and provide medical care, particularly in the wake of the attack. 

"There's a reason they're called New York's Finest," Stark told me at one point, without sarcasm or cynicism. 

There is no doubt, however, that the Avengers were and are heroes. They are people with gifts, appointed as role models not because they want to be but because they so clearly are. They are imperfect, but they try to be more. All of them act with decency derived from the experiences that shaped them. 

"When do you leave tomorrow?" Rogers asks me, dropping out of his handstand and gracefully rolling to his feet. In the background, Thor is promising not to fly indoors anymore. 

"I thought before breakfast," I say. "Goodbyes in situations like this get awkward."

"I can see that," he agrees. "Got enough ink for your piece?"

"I think so."

"Well, I'm sure you'll be fair," he says. Then, thoughtfully, "Maybe be a little kind?"

"I don't think you need to worry," I tell him.

"Then I won't. You've been decent," he says. He offers his hand. "Put 'er there, Parker."

Beyond us, the others have begun arguing about whether the Yankees or the Mets suck more. 

"I better go mediate," Rogers tells me, and jogs back to them to declare, "You're all wrong, the Dodgers suck the most because they left the darn state."

"And now with the Dodgers again," Barton sighs. 

I leave them to their debate, quietly packing to return to my own life as the Avengers carry on with theirs. The sun is rising over Manhattan, glittering off cranes and scaffolding and the shining glass of Stark Tower, where only the A in STARK remains of the sign outside. 

 

_Peter Parker is a freelance journalist and photographer. His work has appeared in the Daily Bugle, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, the Daily Planet, and the New York Times, among others. His first book, Hole In The Sky: The Battle Of Manhattan, will be released in 2014._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Thor's Epic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/852316) by [sanura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanura/pseuds/sanura)
  * [Earth and the Nine Realms: An Introduction to Asgardian Interstellar Travel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/856766) by [tehnakki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehnakki/pseuds/tehnakki)
  * [Thor's Second Epic, or: Grocery Run](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076007) by [sanura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanura/pseuds/sanura)
  * [Cover for "Exclusive" by copperbadge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3530639) by [RunawayMarbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles)
  * [Responsibilities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264659) by [rmc28](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmc28/pseuds/rmc28)
  * [[Podfic] Exclusive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9189185) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




End file.
